


Sauvegarder

by teamchaosprez



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Airplane Crashes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mom Ana Amari, Murder, Panic Attacks, Past Torture, Pilots, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Fall of Overwatch, Recovery, Slipstream - Freeform, Slow Burn, Surgery, The Void, Therapy, Time Skips, Time Travel, it will get better ok, lena probably played too much grand theft auto when she was 12, mercy flirts with everyone, non-graphic vomit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-09-18 01:32:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9359573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamchaosprez/pseuds/teamchaosprez
Summary: Talon made a mistake. They did not reprogram Amelie Lacroix enough, did not take her emotions away enough. She carried through with the assassination of Gerard, but in her grief never returned to their base to complete her reconditioning. But can she be saved from herself?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ayyy so this is an idea that's been spinning around in my head recently. it will be widowtracer, but fairly slow-burn (amelie's husband just died give her time). 
> 
> tw for this chapter: graphic murder, non-graphic vomit

Amelie Lacroix stood as still as death, watching as the snow fell from the sky with a wide amber gaze. Never had she thought that she would see it again. She wasn’t entirely sure how she had gotten here; she didn’t know what had happened, she just knew that she had been gone a while. Her breath puffed out in clouds of mist past her lips, and she could sort of recognize that she was beginning to get quite cold. Shelter. She needed to find shelter, or she would freeze to death, and she didn’t think that was something she particularly wanted to do.

She needed to complete something. A mission. But she didn’t know what it was.

Hugging herself tightly, Amelie looked around, attempting to figure out exactly where she was. She recognized some of the buildings surrounding her, and it registered after a moment that she must have been Gibraltar. Exactly where she was the last moment she could remember. If she was unsure of what just happened to her, she supposed she needed to get to the Overwatch base nearby. Gerard might be there, and even if he wasn’t, her friends may have answers.

She wanted answers more than anything else at the moment.

She didn’t even need to walk all the way to the base, because she heard a familiar voice calling to her before she could even get off the street she was on. Amelie blinked and turned around, watching with wide eyes as her dearest friend Ana Amari walked quickly over to her. “Amelie,” the sniper breathed in a voice teeming with relief and worry, and the Frenchwoman couldn’t help but feel mildly guilty for worrying her. “Oh, god, it’s been two months since you went missing. We’ve been worried sick about you - where have you been all this time?”

Amelie opened her mouth to respond, but before she could Ana shook her head and carefully, cautiously, held onto her wrist with a firm grip. “We need to get you to Angela,” she announced, her tone wavering slightly, and all Amelie could do was nod in agreement. Medical attention sounded wonderful; somewhere warm sounded even more wonderful. “You must be freezing - how did you escape? What happened to you? Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know,” was all she could respond with, and her voice was far more small and broken than she intended for it to be. Shit.

Ana sighed and shook her head, shrugging off her long coat and helping Amelie put it on. She was immediately grateful for the warmth, and managed to give her friend a small smile, which was returned with a sadder smile. She was led to the towering watchpoint that served as one of Overwatch’s main bases, and the relief that she felt upon seeing the familiar logo on the building was immense. She was safe, and it was a wonderful feeling; even though she couldn’t remember any of the last two months, she had the feeling it had been quite a long time since she was exactly that.

The doors opened, and the first person that Amelie saw was the young woman who she considered to be her best friend - a prodigy pilot picked up by Overwatch, Lena Oxton. Lena sprinted over to her, and despite Ana speaking her name in a quiet warning, threw most of her weight on Amelie in a tight hug. The Frenchwoman stumbled backward a little, but was so happy to receive such warm and genuinely  _ good _ contact from someone she had missed so much that she nearly cried and returned the embrace tightly.

She must have still been in shock, because she could barely understand the speedy words coming from her dearest friend’s mouth, Lena honestly looking like she was about to burst into tears.

She was home.

* * *

 

Doctor Angela Ziegler muttered something under her breath in her native German as she looked at the results of the various examinations run on Amelie, the young surgeon doing a final check on the young woman as she glanced at the papers one last time. “I just don’t understand,” she spoke with a shake of her head. “You don’t seem to be harmed at all; very slight pneumonia from standing out in the cold, but you were brought here before it could get severe. There are no chemicals in your bloodstream, no bruises or cuts, no evidence of sexual assault… are you  _ sure _ you don’t remember anything?”

Amelie’s shock had worn off by now, and she shook her head without the distant disorientation that had surrounded her when Ana found her. “I’m absolutely sure,” she responded, her voice more solid and present, though the haughty air she normally possessed was completely absent from her posture. It probably wouldn’t come back - this entire debacle was very sobering. “Last I remember, I was on my way home from the store to make dinner. There was a sharp pain in my neck, and I guess I passed out, and I don’t recall anything after that until I was standing on the street in the cold.”

Angela shook her head and sighed. It was obvious that she was frustrated by her inability to figure anything out, and Amelie wished that she could remember something, anything that she could tell her friend about. “I guess we’re done with your examinations then,” the doctor spoke carefully, giving the Frenchwoman a small smile before reaching forward to hug her as gently as possible. “I’m glad you’re back, Amelie. We were all so worried about you. God, especially Gerard. He’s been a wreck.”

Though she knew that nothing that had just happened was her fault, Amelie still felt a slap of guilt in her chest, and she looked down at the white tiled floor of the medical ward. She had been here many times visiting, but never before for herself. “I’m sorry,” she apologized softly as she returned the embrace with a deep sigh. A moment of silence passed between the two friends before Amelie found it in her to ask another question. “Where is Gerard, anyway? I… I’d like to see him.”

There was an odd feeling in her chest when she mentioned her husband’s name, but she chose to ignore it. She genuinely did want to see him - she was in love with the man, after all.

“He’s been stationed in Hanamura, but he’s on his way back with Reyes and Morrison. They took a quick plane; should be here any minute now.” Angela gave Amelie a smile, putting the papers down on a side table. “I need to go check on someone else right now, and I’m going to let Lena back in so you won’t be alone. Is that alright?”

Amelie nodded, and Angela gently patted her hand before leaving the room. She then had a minute where the room was quiet, and she sighed heavily before looking up at the ceiling and the fluorescent lights that were so familiar but seemed so far away. Everything seemed alright for the first time in a while, and she almost felt… tired. She considered taking a nap, but before that thought could completely come to fruition the door opened again and Lena appeared in the doorway with a bright smile and a bouquet of flowers tucked into the elbow of one arm.

“‘Ello, love!” the young woman spoke in a voice that was almost too cheerful and energetic, and Amelie almost laughed. “Boy, you wouldn’t  _ believe _ some’a the crazy stuff you missed, Amelie. Wait ‘til I tell you about the drama with Fareeha!”

She was trying to distract her, talk about something else - and Amelie really did want to know how the people at Overwatch had been, and Ana’s teenage daughter was someone that she was very fond of. “What, did she finally reach her rebellious phase?”

“Yeah, and man, is everyone having trouble dealing with it. She actually pulled the ‘you’re not my dad’ line when Gabe tried to get her to stop speeding every time she comes to see how Ana’s doing, and man, was he pissed…”

Completely relaxed - an achievement in itself - Amelie was happy to just relax in the cot and listen to her friend ramble on about everything that she missed. It felt normal - it felt right.

Gerard Lacroix arrived in the medical ward less than an hour after Angela left the room, and Amelie could tell that he was coming based on the sprinting footsteps slapping against the concrete floor before his face appeared in the doorway; his warm brown eyes were wide with worry, and as soon as he saw her smiling at him, he seemed to melt and relax.

Amelie was happy when he rushed over and wrapped his arms around her, his face burrowing into her dark hair. He was shaking; she had never seen him like this before, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. “I’m so glad that you’re safe,” he murmured softly to her in their native French, and all Amelie could really do in response was tighten her grip and close her eyes.

But in the back of her head, there was an urge.

A dangerous urge, an unspeakable one that she had never experienced even with her history of intrusive thoughts. She wanted to grab a syringe off the side table with her papers on it and drive it through the back of his neck. The thought terrified her, and she tightened her grip on her husband even further, trying to ignore it as best she could. She wasn’t going to hurt him. She would never forgive herself if she hurt him.

But she thought it was nothing - just another intrusive urge in a long, long line. It would go away if she ignored it.

And so two days later, she was cleared to go home, confident that nothing was wrong.

* * *

 

For two weeks, she fought the urges that she got whenever she was in the same room as Gerard and a deadly object was anywhere nearby. For two weeks, she avoided mentioning anything to Angela, certain that absolutely nothing was wrong; certain that it was whatever had happened to her that was causing her to have these urges. It was just the trauma. That had to be it.

But one day in early January, while her husband napped after returning home from work and she prepared dinner with a chef’s knife, she lost the fight against these murderous urges. Amelie felt her blood run colder, a strange numbness settling over her heart that stifled her emotions and led her to approach the bedroom she shared with her beloved. Her amber eyes were icy as she stared at the man she loved, and her grip tightened on the knife as she stalked over to the bed.

She drove the blade into his chest with sadistic precision, and his eyes shot open as he gasped for air. Amelie was vaguely aware of tears beginning to stream down her cheeks as she yanked the knife out of his heart and began striking again, and again, and again. He tried to grab at her arms, but she was moving too quickly for him to catch her in his weakened state. “Amelie,” he gasped her name out, the expression on his face one of two different kinds of pain. “Amelie,  _ arrête s'il-te-plaît _ ,” he pleaded in a raspy voice, his breathing becoming more and more ragged with every second.

She wanted to stop. God, she wanted to stop; she wanted to pull the knife away and call for an ambulance and save Gerard’s live. But she couldn’t; it was like the stabbing was mechanical now, the unsettling numbness keeping her from truly processing exactly what she was doing. It wasn’t until Gerard stopped struggling and went still that she finally found the ability to stop stabbing and throw the knife across the room as if it were a grenade, and it was with horror that she watched her husband take his last shaking breaths.

Amelie let out a strangled sob and cradled him in his arms, apologizing over and over again as she rocked his now lifeless body and begged to a god that she didn’t believe in to wake her up and confirm that this was just a terrible, twisted nightmare. She couldn’t believe this just happened; she didn’t  _ want _ to believe this just happened. She didn’t understand what had just come over her, or why she ever had the urge in the first place. Though she had just  _ lived _ it, she really had no idea what the fuck was going on, or why it was happening to her, or why she couldn’t have just fought it.

She was only snapped out of her grief and shock by a crackling voice coming from somewhere inside of her head.  _ Widowmaker. _ A single word; a word that was unfamiliar to her for several seconds until, suddenly, she remembered.

She remembered.

Her screams.

Her pain.

Her personality, her thoughts, her emotions being overturned and blocked.

Getting a new name.

She was Widowmaker.

No, she wasn’t.

She was Amelie Lacroix.

“Leave me alone,” she growled in response to the voice in her head, gripping her dark hair.

_ Widowmaker. Get cleaned up and wait for retrieval in your backyard. We will bring you back to Talon headquarters to complete your transformation. I repeat, get cleaned up and wait for retrieval in the backyard, _ the voice spoke in a voice marred by static, and that was how Amelie knew that it wasn’t just an auditory hallucination. There was a communicator in her head, and it was sending her demands from the very organization that tried to kill Gerard so many times, that kidnapped her and turned her into the monster she was now. Amelie felt dizzy, and she felt sick.

But mostly, she just wanted to follow orders.

Her head spinning, she made her way out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, gripping the counter to try and keep herself steady. Amelie’s breath came out in wheezes, and she stumbled over to the sink, turning it on and using some of the water to wipe the blood from her face. The water ran red with blood, and she immediately felt the little she had eaten that day rising back up from her stomach and into her throat.

She barely made it to the toilet before she vomited.

Amelie started sobbing still draped over the toilet, barely able to work up the will to flush it and collapse back to lay on her back on the tiled floor. She screamed and cried like an upset child, ignoring the declarations from the comm to clean herself up or she would miss her opportunity for retrieval. She didn’t care. She didn’t want to be retrieved. She wasn’t supposed to feel this much; she knew that, because it had been explained to her that she would no longer have emotions by the time she was returned home. But she had felt so much, and right now she felt like she was dying for the searing pain that burned and tore apart her aching heart.

She didn’t want more torture. She didn’t want to be turned into something even more monstrous. Above everything else, she didn’t want to work for the people that made her do this. She just wanted to curl up into a little ball on this bathroom floor, and cry, and maybe even never move from this position again. She wanted to die here - but for now, she would settle for remaining in place.

So that was what she did.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena finds Gerard's body and tries to help Amelie - but when she only makes things a little worse, Angela is called for backup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im always a slut for mercy

When she didn’t hear from either of the Lacroixes in three days, Lena understandably got more than a little bit worried, and so with her mouth set into a frown and her brows furrowed she approached their little Gibraltar home after she got back from a smaller mission one day. Gerard had taken a few days off to make sure Amelie got settled back in, which was understandable, but for the last week and a half he had been faithfully showing up at Overwatch operations as usual. It was uncommon for him to be even an hour late, let alone not show his face for three days.

The first thing that struck her when she approached was the silence.

It was uncommon for it to be quiet at the Lacroix house. Lena had visited more than a few times since beginning to volunteer for Overwatch, and she had learned that Gerard liked to have music or the television on really loud, and Amelie didn’t mind it much. There was an uneasy atmosphere over the house as well, and an unshakable sense that something was wrong just wouldn’t leave the young woman alone as she approached and knocked on the expensive oak of the front door. “Amelie? Gerard?”

No answer.

A frown now stuck on her face, Lena reached for the handle and turned it, mildly surprised when it opened easily. They had to be home, then; if they weren’t, they would have locked the door, because Amelie had been pretty paranoid since the assassination attempts started and Gerard wanted her to feel at peace despite already being in a relatively safe area. “Amelie? Gerard?” she tried calling again, cracking the door open and sticking her head in - she was welcome whenever, as had been explained to her, but she didn’t want to be mistaken for an intruder.

There was no answer, so she opened the door the rest of the way and took a step into the house reluctantly. “I’m coming in,” she announced, and again the couple failed to answer. The uneasy feeling only increased once she was inside - the air was heavy, and something was seriously wrong, though she couldn’t figure exactly what just by sitting inside. Lena’s eyebrows furrowed as she journeyed further into the house, making sure that her footsteps weren’t silent so she wouldn’t scare anyone if she snuck up on either of them; Amelie could be kind of jumpy.

The living room was empty, the television off, and she wrinkled her nose at the food left on the counter that had gone bad. That alone was a bad sign - Amelie kept a clean house, and there was no way everything could be fine if she left dinner out to rot. Had they been kidnapped? Had they been killed mysteriously? A million different scenarios flitted through her head, and Lena’s heart began pounding in her chest as she slowly began walking down the hallway. She tried to reassure herself that she would find them and everything would be fine, but her optimism wore away with every moment she couldn’t locate either of her friends.

As she approached the room at the end of the hallway that she knew to be the master bedroom, she became aware of the strong smell of rotting meat.  _ Oh no. _ That absolutely was not a good sign. Lena had never seen a corpse before, even with her time in a military organization, but she had read enough novels and watched enough bad crime shows to know what she was about to find. Beginning to feel dizzy, she took a deep breath of the rancid air, and reached for the handle.

Nothing, however, could ever prepare her for the sight of Gerard Lacroix, dead as a doornail and laying in a pool of his own blood on the mattress. There were no words to describe the sound of sorrow and terror that tore past Lena’s throat as she covered her mouth and stepped back. She didn’t know what to make of this - she wanted to vomit, but she swallowed the bitter bile before that thought could come to fruition. It looked like Talon had finally succeeded in getting rid of the Overwatch agent, and Lena felt shock and numbness settle over her mind and chest before anything else.

Okay, she just - she just needed to stay calm. The young woman slowly shut the door, clicking it back in place and going through what she needed to do in her head. She needed to call Morrison or Gabe or somebody, she needed to get back to the watchpoint to try and get ahold of herself, she needed to figure out where the fuck she had left that nice suit because fuck she needed to go to a funeral soon… but before anything else, she needed to find Amelie.

_ Oh, god, Amelie. _ She must have been so afraid - was she even alive? Her husband was dead, and apparently she had been in the house when it happened. She was probably one of the witnesses. Lena needed to make sure that she was okay before the gave her over to Morrison and Gabriel for questioning and shit. She probably  _ wasn’t _ okay, what the fuck kind of thought was that? The pilot squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fists, taking some deep breaths, trying desperately to remain calm and figure out where the woman must be. She couldn’t afford to panic or break down yet.

The first actual reasonable idea that crossed through her head was that she probably should check the house first. If Amelie was still inside, then she probably was in pretty rough shape, so Lena was actually kind of hoping that her friend wasn’t in the house at all - but still alive. She sucked in a deep breath through her teeth and began opening the other doors in the hallway, checking the spare bedroom, the office, checking the living room and kitchen again. There was no sign of Amelie anywhere, and Lena wasn’t sure if she was becoming more anxious or relieved.

Unfortunately, upon opening the door, the first thing she found made her heart lurch in her chest.

Amelie was curled up in the bathtub, dried blood covering her pale skin and the light sundress she was wearing. She seemed to have been crying, her eyes red and puffy and her skin unhealthily pale. She seemed to be even thinner than usual - she must not have been eating much, if at all. She didn’t even seem to notice Lena at the door, and the pilot wasn’t sure if she felt more pity or serious concern for her best friend - if the blood was anything to go by, she had definitely watched Gerard die.

“Ame, love?” she spoke softly and quietly, approaching her friend slowly and kneeling by the tub, reaching out to gently put one hand on her shoulder. Amelie flinched at the contact and stared at her with wide amber eyes, and Lena quickly withdrew her hand, not wanting to cross boundaries and make things worse. “It’s me. I’m here to help you, alright? Can you tell me what happened? What do you need?” She probably sounded really condescending, but she didn’t mean to be. She wanted to help.

_ “Je l'ai tué.” _ Amelie’s voice was quiet and hoarse, the French slipping out with great difficulty, and before Lena could remind her friend that she didn’t speak the language her friend continued speaking in her native tongue.  _ “Je suis un monstre. J'ai tué mon mari. Je ne voulais pas le blesser, mais je l'ai fait de toute façon.” _ She curled up into her ball again, and even though the pilot didn’t understand a single word of what was just spoken to her she  _ did _ kind of pick out the word “monster,” if for no other reason purely because it sounded like English.

“Love, could you explain again in English please? I feel like a complete berk, but I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

_ “Je ne mérite pas d'être compris.” _

Lena sighed heavily and stood up, offering her hands to the older woman. Amelie looked at the help offered to her, glanced up at Lena’s face, and grabbed on. The pilot helped her up with relative ease and wrapped an arm around her waist, supporting her as she walked with her out of the bathroom. Momentarily, she thought that she probably ought to help her clean up, but as twisted as it was she supposed that she was part of a crime scene and she might get in trouble with her superiors for messing with a crime scene. She didn’t want to overstep any boundaries, either. 

“Come on, Ame, I’ll take you to the watchpoint and Mercy can help you get all cleaned up,” she spoke softly and gently, supporting her friend and keeping her upright as they walked… until, of course, she finished speaking and Amelie shoved her off with surprising strength and fell to the ground.

Her immediate response was concern, and she went to grab onto and help Amelie again, but the older woman shook her head rapidly, grabbing onto her dark hair with both hands and curling up.  _ “Je l'ai tué, je l'ai tué, je suis un monstre, laisse-moi! Laissez-moi ici pour pourrir avant que je vous blesser aussi!” _ she spoke rapidly, in hysterics and beginning to rock back and forth, and as much as Lena wanted to help she was beginning to get the idea that there was nothing she could do for her friend at the moment. But she couldn’t just leave her there.

So she pulled out her comm and called the first person she thought of.

* * *

 

Angela had just finished wrapping up McCree after a rather dangerous scuffle during his most recent mission and began cleaning up the station where she had treated him when she suddenly heard Lena’s voice calling for her from the comm she had left on one of the comfortable waiting chairs against the wall. She frowned and furrowed her eyebrows, wondering what on Earth the pilot could need, before walking over and picking up the device, pressing a button before responding. “Dr. Ziegler here,” she answered calmly before being struck with the unnaturally calm voice of Lena.

“There’s been a situation at the Lacroix house,” the Brit spoke softly, and Angela couldn’t help but wonder how she was being so calm if something had happened to their friends, trying to ignore the anxiety beginning to gnaw away at her chest. She was a doctor; she needed to handle this like a doctor. “Gerard Lacroix is dead in the bedroom, and I found Amelie alive and mostly unharmed, but she’s hysterical. I got her to leave the bathroom, but when I told her that I was taking her to the watchpoint she pushed me off and started having a meltdown. I can’t help her, but I’m not going to leave her. She’s just speaking in French, she refuses to say anything in English. Could you come help me?”

The doctor let out a soft sigh at the response, but couldn’t let her mourn Gerard or worry too extensively about Amelie yet. “I’m on my way,” she assured her friend, glancing around the medical ward. She supposed she wouldn’t need her Valkyrie - that couldn’t help with trauma. She grabbed her coat from the hook and quickly left the ward. “She may be having a panic attack. Try to reassure her. Make sure you stay calm, because panicking will only make her feel worse. I’ll be there in five minutes. If she looks like she’s about to hurt herself or you, you can use force, but only if she becomes a danger.”

“Affirmative. Over and out.”

With the call ended, Angela felt okay with turning off her comm and putting it in her coat pocket, letting out a heavy sigh as she quickly walked down the street. She couldn’t say she hadn’t expected this to happen eventually - Gerard had been quite the popular target for Talon recently, and as hard as Overwatch agents tried to keep him safe and alive it was only a matter of time before they actually succeeded in taking his life. It was still a shock, though, and it still hurt, but she had to push her emotions out of the way and do her job. 

Angela was a compassionate person, but this was what med school prepared her for - that was what she was telling herself, anyway. When she was a top surgeon and scientist in Switzerland, she was never personally affected by the many lives she saw fade away daily as much as she tried to help; if she slipped, she would have an emotional breakdown she could never recover from.

But now that she worked for Overwatch, she treated her friends. That was different. She had prior emotional attachments to all of the people that came in and out of the med ward, and every single life so far that had almost slipped away she had been able to save, because she would never forgive herself if she had a chance to help one of her friends and coworkers but failed to do so.

This was her first loss. It was going to be hard.

But damn if she wasn’t going to suck it up and be there to help the survivor.

When she reached the Lacroix house, Angela found the door still open - how Lena, to rush in and forget to close the door. But she couldn’t bring herself to smile, a soft sigh leaving her as she slowly entered the house and glanced around.

It wasn’t very difficult to find Lena and Amelie, as they were in the hallway where Amelie had apparently begun having a panic attack that she had yet to get out of. Lena seemed to be well on the way of hysterics as well, which was quite understandable with the anxiety that Angela knew she struggled from but refused to get diagnosed. “I’ll take it from here, Lena. Go make a report to Morrison and Reyes. I promise to contact you as soon as she’s ready for visitors in the med ward.”

The pilot seemed to be very reluctant, her hazel gaze hovering on her friend for a moment, and Angela thought that she would have to repeat herself; Lena was loyal almost to a fault, and Amelie was in need. Of course she would be reluctant to just leave.

But she must have understood that that part of the situation was important too, because she took a deep breath and nodded before sprinting off and out of the house.

Not even watching her leave, Angela turned her attention on Amelie, kneeling down to her level. “Amelie, it’s me, Angie. I know you’re only speaking in French right now, but do you understand me?” she asked softly, keeping her voice gentle and calm and watching with unwavering blue eyes as the other woman’s amber gaze shifted up to meet her own before she nodded in response.

She tried to hold back the pity she felt for the shaking and hyperventilating woman in front of her, swallowing slightly before speaking again. “Is it okay if I hug you? Would that help?” She waited for a nod before doing exactly that, wrapping her arms around Amelie’s shivering frame and feeling her slump against her. Angela had learned some about trauma and anxiety, but she was mostly trained in the physical and scientific side to being a doctor - psychology, while interesting, had never been her strong suit. Still, she did her best, murmuring calm and reassuring words to the younger woman and rubbing her back in soothing circles.

Slowly but surely, Amelie stopped shaking. Angela pulled out of the hug slightly but not completely, making eye contact with the considerably calmer Madame Lacroix. “Okay, Amelie, you’re safe now, I promise. Lena and I will not let anything hurt you, and neither will anybody else at Overwatch. I’m going to take you back to the base now, and you don’t have to tell me anything about what happened until you’re ready, okay? Everything’s going to be alright. I promise.”

Amelie seemed hesitant, but nodded, and Angela rose to her feet before offering a hand to help the other woman up - which she took carefully. The doctor was a little pleased with the progress in helping her friend that she had managed to make, but…

She couldn’t shake the feeling that something bigger and more terrible was at play.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amelie has a nightmare.

She didn’t deserve the help, and she didn’t understand why she was getting it.

She tried to explain that she had been the one to murder Gerard, that there was a Talon communicator in her head and that she needed to be locked up or that Angela needed to find it and get rid of it. But she wasn’t anywhere near calm enough to remember how to properly speak English and not just string sentences together with no sense of grammar, and none of the agents that came up to her spoke a lick of French. It was aggravating, but she could only wait it out.

It was only a couple of hours before Angela succeeded in convincing Winston to program Athena to understand and translate multiple languages - “Why can’t she already do that, anyway?” she had asked in aggravation, “We have agents from across the world.” - and was warding off anybody that wanted to ask questions about what had happened to Gerard and his wife, why they weren’t showing up on base anymore… and when it was explained that Agent Lacroix was dead, what the hell had happened to him. And as time went on and most people were deflected from seeing her, Amelie came to understand exactly why Angela was considered by many to be a guardian angel.

Only Lena and Ana were allowed to see her at the moment, being her two closest friends and the people who made small talk more often than they pried her for information and scolded her when she couldn’t respond properly in English. But even they didn’t seem to know how to act around her - while they tried to pretend that everything was normal, neither of them could hide the pity and uncertainty in their voices. Amelie supposed she got that. How was one supposed to talk to somebody that was recently widowed and clearly suffering from extensive trauma?

Life was like a strange painting, or a very long and very bad joke. Life was turning into some strange poem written by Edgar Allan Poe - she was suffering in silence, and eventually stopped trying to talk altogether, French or not. No matter how much she tried to explain, nobody understood her anyway, and if she were to try and communicate and people actually could figure out what she was saying, she doubted they would understand her anyway. This was very, very frustrating and distressing.

For the first day, she was very zoned out and dissociated almost nonstop. It was as though she was watching everything happening in a movie, despite knowing that yes, this was her life, and yes, she was living it. Amelie didn’t know what to do with herself, truly; she didn’t know why nobody had questioned her, considering she was very obviously the witness to a crime. She was unresponsive when Angela scrubbed the blood off of her, with the exception of small nods of consent when it was explained to her that she needed to be changed into a hospital gown. 

Oh, there were attempts to communicate with her, and she could process them decently. She paid attention whenever Lena, Ana, or Angela tried to make conversation with her, but the words were only understandable about half the time and she just wasn’t willing to speak. She hadn’t been left alone for even a minute since being brought to the watchpoint, at least one person always in the room to stay with her, but she had never felt so alone in her life. She felt like she wanted to cry, but she couldn’t make herself through the numbness of shock and dissociation.

That night, it was only that numbness that led her to fall asleep.

_ She twirled and danced upon the stage for a massive audience, and when she stilled cheers rang out through the massive room. Her pale skin nearly glowed in the spotlight, and the costume hugged her body, but not quite enough to be uncomfortable. Beads of sweat had appeared on her forehead from the taxing physical performance, but she couldn’t hold down the smile that appeared across her lips as the curtains closed for intermission and she allowed her frozen pose to relax. _

_ Amelie watched as set pieces were moved away from the stage and her fellow dancers vanished into the side curtains, but when she made an attempt to move, she was frozen in place. She furrowed her brows, confused, and attempted again to walk, but was unable to. A heavy, annoyed sigh left her, and she decided that she would just have to stay where she was while she waited for whoever she was waiting for to come and find her - and she didn’t have to wait long, as a clear and familiar voice called “Amelie!” from the edge of the stage. _

_ Gerard rushed to her and wrapped his arms around her, and she happily leaned into his warm embrace and familiar smell. Her eyes closed, and she held tight, not wanting to let him go ever again. “You dance as beautifully as ever,” he commented simply, pressing a gentle kiss against the top of her head, and she sighed contentedly in response. His hold was something that she hoped she never forgot; even if she no longer remembered his face or his voice, she just wanted to remember how it felt to be held close by the man she loved so much. _

_ He pulled out of the embrace and gave her a warm smile, his fingers threading through her hair. Amelie’s heart fluttered - even after five years of marriage, every moment still felt so new, so magical. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but before he could get any words out, he coughed and red substance sprayed from his throat and splattered across his wife’s face and beautiful costume. She was shocked for a moment, unsure of how to react, but she knew before she could even think logically that he was coughing up blood. Something was wrong - something was very, very wrong. _

_ Amelie was about to call out for help, but before she could do anything else he opened his mouth, a choked question of ‘why’ pushing out of his lips. “I didn’t do anything,” she responded quickly, but when she glanced down to try and see why he would be choking on his own blood, she found her hand holding the hilt of a knife, the entirety of the blade driven into her husband’s stomach. A cold feeling of fear pounded out from her heart, and she had no idea what could have pushed her to do this - and she didn’t seem to have any control over her own hand as it pulled the knife from her husband’s gut and began stabbing him again, and again, harder and harder, making sickening  _ squelch _ noises as he died. _

_ She screamed. It was a terrible and agonized noise, not quite human, that she wasn’t entirely sure how she could have made. He fell to the ground, and she wanted to catch him and hold him, but she still couldn’t move - and he was already gone, anyway. She screamed and screamed as his flesh began melting off of his body, leaving nothing but a skeleton behind, as a voice repeated in her head over and over that she needed to get to the rendezvous point for retrieval --- _

Amelie woke up with a gasp, sitting up straight and hyperventilating for breath as she quickly looked around her surroundings. Her fist bunched up the fabric of her hospital gown at her chest, panic squeezing at her lungs and heart and her brain struggling to keep up with the sudden change. Tears streaked down her cheeks, and she covered her mouth with her free hand to try and muffle any sobs that might have escaped.

It wasn’t until she had calmed down sufficiently that she realized that she was completely alone in the room for the first time since her arrival.

The widow was tempted to get up and look around, and she began to do exactly that, swinging her legs over the edge of the cot and flinching slightly when her bare feet hit the cold linoleum of the floor. Her heart was still pounding in her chest, but she was no longer on the verge of a panic attack, so she doubted that she would just collapse while she was snooping around the room and looking for information. What she wanted to find, she didn’t know.

She didn’t get very far in her wandering, though, because as soon as she stepped a little closer to the door she heard the voices of Angela Ziegler and Jack Morrison just outside of the room. That explained why she woke up alone, at least, but she couldn’t stop herself in stepping closer and leaning her ear against the wall to try and listen in on their conversation - she figured it may have been about her or Gerard, and therefore she wanted to know what was so important… and even if it wasn’t, she wanted to have full knowledge of everything that was happening.

“... finger prints were found all over the fucking murder weapon, Angela,” the strike commander was speaking impatiently, a little bit of anger audible in his voice. “She murdered Gerard. We’re ninety percent sure of it, and damn it, she needs to be questioned and brought to justice. She’s been with you all day. She might just be faking all of the bullshit shock and trauma because she’s scared of getting caught and being thrown in prison.” His voice grew in passion and frustration as he spoke, and he was honestly beginning to scare Amelie a little bit.

“I think I know when a patient is faking, Jack, and she is not faking. She’s been through a lot of trauma and she is clearly in shock and grieving.” Angela’s voice was almost eerily calm and patient - did she have to deal with this a lot? “I understand that you are obsessed with carrying out justice. I want for Gerard to have justice, too. But Mrs. Lacroix is my patient first, and a person of interest second - and I say that she needs more time before she is thrown under whatever you and Reyes have in place of a law. So please step away from the medical ward and go to bed. It is two in the morning.”

Amelie was aware that the doctor and the commander were very close friends, and she couldn’t help but wonder why Angela was regarding him so coldly - maybe she was angry that he had stormed up to her so late? Maybe she was just tired? A twinge of guilt passed through the Frenchwoman’s chest, and she gave a heavy sigh that she hoped was inaudible in the pressing silence coming from the hall.

“Fine. You can have a little longer with her. But as soon as she starts speaking English again, I want her in for questioning, no matter what she says about the whole situation.”

“Thank you, Jack.”

Footsteps began walking away from the door, and Amelie rather quickly moved back to her bed before Angela could reenter the room. Rather quickly, she sifted through her options in her head - though it didn’t take her long to reach the conclusion that she thought to be kind of obvious. She needed to try and communicate about the comm in her head. She needed to try to communicate that she had been brainwashed and she had been programmed to kill her husband.

When the doctor opened the door and stepped back inside, the widow was sitting up straight as a rod and watching her with cautious yellow eyes. Amelie hesitated, just for a moment, before she spoke up and struggled to remember how to pronounce some English before she talked. “Communicator,” she managed to blurt out as Angela stared at her with widened blue eyes.

“Could you elaborate, please, Amelie?” Angela asked, and she had to appreciate the calm that the older woman was exerting despite apparently being surprised.

“Communicator in my head. Forced by Talon. Did not remember anything until Gerard died. I killed him. I killed him. They made me kill him and then they used a communicator in my head to tell me to get to my backyard for extraction.” The words spilled out quicker and quicker as she got a handle on talking again, her usually clear voice somewhat hoarse and sore from underuse.

Angela, to her credit, sprung to work rather quickly, pulling a device out of the pocket of her coat and holding it against various points on Amelie’s skull. Her brows were furrowed in concentration, a frown across her lips when the device began beeping quickly. She murmured something in German as she expanded the device into a screen, her eyes widening when she saw whatever was there. “You’re right, there is something embedded in your skull,” she responded slowly, lowering the device and putting it back in her pocket. “I am going to have to get that thing out immediately. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that when I was examining you after you were found.” She sighed heavily and shook her head. “That is in the past, though. I’m going to sedate you so I can extract it, and then if you are up to it we will talk about what Talon did. Is that alright?”

Slowly, Amelie nodded, and watched as Angela cleaned off a needle before gently pressing it against the skin on the side of her neck and injecting. There was a slight sting, and then Amelie floated off into a much more peaceful unconsciousness.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena is very, very loyal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i rlly want this to be slow-burny but....... the gayness............ it calls me...................

Lena didn’t hesitate in zipping out of her quarters - didn’t even bother changing out of her pajamas and into some actual clothes - as soon as Angela requested her presence in the med ward to sit with Amelie and help if she began panicking and to offer moral support if needed . She was just glad that her friend was communicating properly again, really, even if there had been a tone in the doctor’s voice that suggested that she was tired and something had gone wrong. The pilot just wanted to help - that was all she really wanted when it came to her friends, really, and Amelie Lacroix was the closest to her out of everyone she knew. She would absolutely be there in her time of need.

She wasn’t sure what she expected when she made her way to Amelie’s room in the med ward, but it wasn’t her best friend sitting up in bed with a bloodstained bandage around her head and a glassy, far off look in her eyes. Lena swallowed thickly as she stepped into the room, her bare feet protesting against the freezing linoleum, but didn’t even break her pace as she walked over to Amelie and gently took the older woman’s thin hand in her own. “So,” she spoke up, watching Angela carefully as she turned away from the screen she was typing on to face her. “What happened? What changed?”

“Amelie had a communicator from Talon embedded into her skull, and they were sending her commands through it after the death of Gerard. She confessed to killing him, but says she remembers Talon torturing her and giving her that command multiple times over the months she was there. Morrison and Reyes are on their way down to question her, but I absolutely do not want her alone when they do. You and I are here to make sure that they stay in line and she does alright.”

“I am here and listening, you know,” Amelie spoke up in a voice that was so hoarse and rough that it grated on Lena’s heart. She hated hearing her best friend sound so weak and down, and she desperately wished that she could do something more than just holding her hand to help her. “I am sure that I can handle Morrison and Reyes, but I am… grateful that you called Lena in.” She gave a heavy sigh, and the agent gently squeezed her hand, hoping it might give her a bit of extra strength.

“Well, I’m just glad you’re speaking again, love,” Lena gave a small smile as she quietly murmured to her friend, and the older woman seemed to try to give her a smile in return but it came off as more of a grimace. The agent barely resisted the urge to just throw her arms around Amelie in a tight hug, thinking that she must not really want to be touched in too intense of a manner after being so thoroughly traumatized and having to recount those memories not once, but twice.

Lena had half a mind to storm into Talon’s base the moment somebody found it, march up to whoever was responsible for hurting the gentle woman that she loved - perhaps a little stronger than just platonically, but she wasn’t about to explore that. Not just after the man Amelie had been married to for five years died at her hands; maybe not ever. “I have been speaking,” the Frenchwoman responded, raising an eyebrow in a gesture that looked almost like the old Amelie. “It is not my fault that nobody here ever bothered to learn a lick of French.”

“Ah, we did have a translator, but he’s been off on a mission for the last week.” Lena shrugged slightly, taking on a lighter tone to try and keep the mood of their conversation away from the ‘terribly depressing’ line. She wanted to be an island of support for Amelie, somebody that was constant and didn’t treat her like a broken doll the way she’d observed others doing. She knew that Ana did her best to do that as well, but was a little more… motherly than she had been before the ‘Talon incident,’ as they had dubbed it, so even the sniper wasn’t the best oasis in a sea of change.

“Perhaps I will have to fill in for him, then,” Amelie murmured softly, and Lena half believed that she was talking to herself based on the way that her gaze averted from Lena and landed on one of the stark white walls of the room. She seemed to be in thought, and the Brit kind of wanted to ask her what she was thinking, but she didn’t really feel like being a bother and disturbing her friend’s thought process unless she was specifically asked to be a distraction.

Silence followed for a time, interrupted only by Angela typing whatever medical report or email was taking up so much of her attention and the occasional rustling of the uncomfortable plastic covering the mattress that Amelie sat upon. Lena’s mind was occupied with thoughts, about what her friend must have been going through, about what she must have already gone through - about what this meant for her standing with Overwatch, or her legal existence in general. She technically couldn’t be tried if she was forced to do something or her judgement was compromised, but… grudges and anger could fester rather easily, people who weren’t guilty could be blamed, and Gerard was a close friend of most people in charge of the little law that Overwatch held separate from other countries.

Lena would fight for her, she decided. Until her very last breath; she would keep her around unless she didn’t want to be kept in the organization that had employed her husband, she would be the lawyer if she absolutely had to if it meant avoiding Amelie getting incarcerated. Lena didn’t blame her friend for anything; of course she didn’t. She was sad that Gerard was gone, but she knew very well that Talon could do seriously messed up things, and she didn’t think for a moment that Amelie could be lying.

It was just silly to assume they would keep her relatively unharmed. Something had felt wrong with her general decent health from the moment she was allowed to go home, and Lena was both relieved and horrified that her hunch had been correct. She hadn’t wanted it to be; she had hoped from the bottom of her heart that Amelie was fine, but… evidently, she had been changed in a way that Angela couldn’t fix, and that scared Lena more than anything.

The peace didn’t last very long, as no longer than a minute after the silence fell Strike Commander Jack Morrison entered the room with his head held high and Blackwatch’s Commander Gabriel Reyes right behind him. The two defacto leaders of Overwatch were worryingly silent, their frustration almost palpable in the stifling air of the small room, and it wasn’t until Angela turned around in her swivel chair that the tense silence was dispersed. “I do not want either of you to be overly cruel or demanding. No ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine. Mrs. Lacroix is a victim of trauma and was brainwashed by Talon, and I will not have either of you disturbing any chance she has at a psychological recovery by treating her like a criminal in her most vulnerable state.”

Ah. So the chief doctor of Overwatch, the woman who could arguably be described as one of the most important members, would remain steadfast and fight for Amelie as much as she could as well. That was enough to give Lena just the smallest amount of confidence, so she didn’t feel guilty or like a liar when she turned her head to give Amelie the smallest of smiles and squeeze her hand in a reassuring manner. Everything was going to be fine.

“We weren’t planning on it, Dr. Ziegler,” Morrison responded in a rather gruff way, and though Lena didn’t get the sense that he was  _ lying, _ she was aware that they still tended to fall into that role anyway, and she was glad that they now had the thought in their mind to avoid beginning to do that routine again. Maybe it would even get them to act gently for once in their goddamn lives.

“Good, because Lena and I will not allow you back in here if you do,” Angela’s voice carried a bit of a smug tone to it, as if she was glad that she had gotten through to them. “You are free to question her, but do not press if she seems to be having trouble remembering the answer to a question. I will relay if she discloses anything else to me, so do not worry about missing any information.” With that, she stood and brushed off her coat, shot an encouraging smile to Amelie and Lena, and walked out of the room with the rather decisive  _ click click click _ of her heels against linoleum tiles.

The two commanders watched her leave, and then waited a moment before Reyes moved to close the door and stand against it and Morrison pulled the swivel chair to the side of the bed, sitting in such an irritatingly straight and ‘I’m in charge’ way that Lena had to fight down the urge to roll her eyes. “Alright, Amelie, we’ll start from the beginning. What do you remember about your time with Talon?” he asked, pulling a recording device out of his jeans pocket and pressing the button to begin.

Amelie hesitated for a moment, and it took Lena squeezing her hand gently for her to begin speaking. “I was walking home from the store after picking up what I needed to make dinner that night. It was right around Halloween, so I knew that Gerard would be coming home late because he was at the Christmas party. I was alone on the road when I felt a sharp sting in my neck, and just before I blacked out I pulled a tranquilizer dart out of the vein in my neck. I woke up some time later on an operating table in a dark room, restrained and with a man that intimidated me quite a bit standing over me. He told me that they would be doing some work on me until I agreed to their conditions wholeheartedly…”

Amelie then proceeded to spin a tale about being tortured, electrocuted, experimented on, and having invasive operations done to damage her will and peck away her personality. She said that she was told that if she murdered her husband, she would never need to be hurt again; that if she listened to Talon’s demands, they could offer her more protection than Gerard ever could and potentially even a job.

Lena listened in horror as her best friend talked about the trauma she had endured at the hands of a terrorist organization; her words were spoken as calmly as she supposed was possible, the only inkling that she was feeling anything at all being the tight and nearly painful grip she kept on Lena’s hand. She described being knocked out again and waking up in the middle of a street just two or three blocks away from the watchpoint, and then having indescribable urges to hurt her beloved husband every moment she was near him. “I think they did more to me than I can remember to implant that desire in me,” she added in a tone even more deadpan than the one she was recalling with.

Morrison listened intently as well, his lips in a tight frown and his eyebrows furrowed. Lena didn’t look up to see the expression on Reyes’ face, but she could only assume that it was similar. The last thing that Amelie spoke of was the death of Gerard and the communicator that began going off almost immediately, and as soon as she finished speaking an uneasy silence filled the room.

“Well, Mrs. Lacroix,” Morrison spoke up after what felt like an eternity, shutting off the recording device in his hand and rising to his feet. “We can’t blame you for what happened to your husband. Your story sounds pretty legit, taking what we know about Talon into consideration.” He frowned and looked back to Reyes - the older of the two commanders gave a small nod, as if he knew what he was thinking (and, honestly, Lena wouldn’t doubt it). “You’re going to have to stay in the base for the next several days, though, to ensure your safety and recovery, and to make sure Talon doesn’t get ahold of you again. It sounds like they had high hopes for what you could do for them.”

“Thank you, Commander Morrison.”

And with that, the two men left the room, closing the door quickly behind them as they went to make their report or whatever needed to be done. Lena waited a moment before quickly turning to face her friend and practically crushing her in a hug - Amelie tensed against her but returned the embrace, and with contact this close the agent could feel her shaking.

No words were spoken, because Lena couldn’t think of anything she  _ could _ say - all she knew was that she would make sure that Amelie was safe at all times if it was the last thing she did.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angela overworks herself and takes a nap that's way too long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whispers* i'm still pretty new to the overwatch fandom (as far as fanfic writing goes) so i reeeeeaaaaally need comments and feedback lmao please comment

Angela wanted a drink.

Scratch that, Angela  _ needed _ a drink. Several, if could be arranged.

Unfortunately, though, Watchpoint: Gibraltar’s alcohol supply was nonexistent, so she had to settle for sitting by herself in a corner of the break room with a hot cup of coffee cradled in her lap like it was her firstborn child. The young doctor hadn’t slept in a while, a couple of days at least, and she still adamantly refused to try to get any rest whatsoever - she had been working tirelessly, not only on keeping on top of anyone new that walked into the med ward, but also on trying to work out what exactly had been changed in Amelie and trying to fix it. 

When she removed the tiny chip through with Talon was communicating with the Frenchwoman, she had also noticed a slight alteration in her heartbeat. It was slower than usual; at first, she had just chalked it up to the fact that Amelie was a dancer and athletes had a different resting heart rate, but it had been weeks since she danced or probably exercised at all - and Angela needed to try to figure out any difference at all and anything she could do to help. She was not letting Amelie leave the med ward without being two hundred percent well again.

She was staring down at the coffee with tired eyes, and failed to notice when she was joined in the room and Lena walked over in order to sit next to her. She jumped violently when the younger woman greeted her with an amount of cheerfulness that should not have been allowed at this hour (three in the afternoon, she reminded herself), and winced as the scalding liquid spilled from the mug and onto her jeans, burning her fair skin rather easily. “ _ Scheiße _ ,” she cursed in a hiss, immediately getting up and reaching for the paper towel.

“Shit, sorry, doc,” Lena apologized quickly, quickly taking some of the paper towel from Angela’s hands and helping her pat down the liquid on her jeans in the spots that wouldn’t be awkward for somebody else to touch. “I thought you saw me, I should’ve been more obvious about walking in.” She seemed to be really guilty, frowning deeply and watching the doctor with wide brown eyes. Angela almost felt bad that her friend was so scared about having caused her to spill coffee, so she gave just a gentle smile and put one hand on Lena’s arm.

“It is alright, really. I am just rather zoned out.” She made an effort towards keeping her voice calm and awake as it always would, but when her sentence was punctuated with a yawn she knew she had failed. She knew that it was probably obvious she wasn’t getting an awful lot of rest, but at the same time, she didn’t want anybody to notice so that they wouldn’t try too hard to help her out. She didn’t want to sleep; she would lose valuable work time if she so much as laid down for a second or two.

Not that she was being entirely productive running on caffeine with shaky hands and dark bags underneath her eyes, but she wasn’t about to admit to herself that she might not be performing to the best of her abilities. She was a doctor, the best doctor Overwatch had among its ranks, and she needed to put her patients as far before her own needs as she could. She would keep on working without even a moment of rest until she passed out on the floor (and, admittedly, that time was sneaking up on her faster and faster as more time went on).

“Angie, I think you need to get some sleep,” Lena spoke in a tone filled to the brim with concern, and Angela didn’t need to look up at her face to see the worry in her probably widened hazel eyes. She just continued to try to remove the coffee from her jeans, a small frown the only response she gave. “I’m serious, you look like death warmed over. You’re not going to be able to help much of anything. The bags under your eyes practically look designer. We have other doctors, you know. Don’t you trust them?”

“No,” Angela responded quickly - more quickly and desperately than she really meant to, and she cringed slightly at her own words. “I mean, I do, just not to handle Amelie or really much of anybody better than I can. I’ll sleep tonight, I promise, I just want to keep working until at least dusk.” She gave her friend a pleading look, begging her silently to just drop it and not bother her to take a break. “Actually, I need to get back to the med ward soon, the King’s Row squadron is on their way back and knowing Jesse somebody probably got hurt--”

“Angela Ziegler.” Lena spoke her name in a tone that was a little too stern and stubborn for her usually cheery and happy voice. “Knowing  _ you, _ if you’re getting this bad you haven’t slept in a couple of days. Ana and I will stay with Amelie, and the other doctors will take care of anybody that might have gotten injured in London, okay? Somebody will come wake you up if your expertise is really needed, I promise. Swear on me mum’s grave.” She crossed her heart like a child, and Angela couldn’t help but laugh ever so quietly.

“Okay. I will go take a nap. But don’t worry about coming and getting me if something is wrong, okay? It is my job as the head of Gibraltar’s medical team to take care of anything that pops up, and I will never forgive you if something happens while I was asleep.” She took on a more serious and grave tone as she spoke, eyes narrowing at her friend - though Lena didn’t seem fazed at all, probably more pleased by the fact that she had agreed to get some sleep than anything else.

“You got it!” She chirped, giving a salute before grasping Angela’s hand and bouncing with her down the hallway and towards the living quarters that had been set up for any agents that didn’t drag any family along with them or couldn’t afford a house near the watchpoint. “You can count on me, Angie. Just try to get some rest, you’ve earned it!”

The doctor was about to say something in response, but only gave a shake of her head with a small, fond smile on her face. She was sort of glad that she had been talked into taking a break. She really did need a nap - but she promised herself that she would only be out a couple hours.

* * *

 

Waking up on a cot in her quarters with the early afternoon sun blinding her from the window she had forgotten to pull the blinds over before going to sleep, Angela came to know the true meaning of pain. She didn’t make a move to cover her eyes and protect them from the blinding assault of light, choosing instead to simply let out a long groan as if she was a teenager complaining to her mother that she just wanted to sleep for five more minutes before school. She wasn’t a teenager, though, so it only took her a minute or so to sit up on the uncomfortable mattress and send her head spinning in the process.

She was vaguely aware of her fine blonde hair sticking up in all different directions and the line of drool running down her chin, but first and foremost she was concerned with finding out how long Lena had let her sleep, because it was stressing her out more and more as the seconds wore on. She pulled her phone out of her pocket in order to glance at the time, and almost fainted.

It was one in the afternoon, so either she had slept so forcefully that she turned back time or her colleagues had honest to God let her sleep in for twenty two hours. Any drowsiness that was left over in her mind wore off immediately as Angela quickly scrambled to put on the first pair of fresh clothes she could get her hands on and ran her fingers through her hair in an attempt to get it at least somewhat presentable. She wiped the saliva off of her chin with the sleeve of her coat shortly after tugging it on, deciding that she would have to take a shower later, and quickly rushed out of the quarters and the long hallway back to the med ward.

“Good to see you back in the world of the living, doc,” Jesse McCree, relaxing against a nearby wall, spoke up, and she didn’t need to look at him to know that he had a stupid grin on his face. “I was startin’ to think you’d never get up and get back to work, but hey, you’d probably still come back down here if you  _ were _ dead.”

“I was only supposed to nap for a couple of hours,” her words came out quickly, probably making it painfully obvious how distressed she was at having been out for so long. Immediately, she began rushing towards the room she knew that Amelie was in - and, by extent, probably Lena, who she needed to give a piece of her mind. “Jesse, I would really love to chat with you, but I do need to get to work. Can you just tell me if anything from your most recent mission needs fixing up?” She spoke quickly as she put her hand on the doorknob, looking back at her friend with an eyebrow raised.

“Nah, we just had some cuts an’ bruises, an’ someone got grazed by a bullet but somebody else fixed that up pretty easy.” He shrugged, though the grin didn’t leave his face - Angela wasn’t sure if it ever did, actually, when he was in a relaxed setting. He was very easygoing amongst friends, and she supposed that must have been primarily because of his pretty young age. “Oh, Lena told me ‘bout how she had to drag you to bed. Get back to work, but don’t overdo it this time, alright?”

Angela rolled her eyes, but part of her was somewhat touched by the concern that was being shown for her wellbeing. “Well, if you ruffians would just stop getting yourselves hurt every ten minutes, I would not need to overwork myself,” she responded in a fondly teasing tone, a small smile appearing on her face as she reached over to gently poke the cowboy’s chest. “Try not to get in any trouble, Jesse. Don’t bother Gabriel if he’s busy setting up Blackwatch’s business deals again.”

“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” Jesse winked, and before she could scold him for using outdated movie references again he walked away to cause trouble elsewhere.

The doctor let out a small sigh and shook her head, a tiny smile still on her face, before opening the door and entering the room. Lena and Amelie were both sitting on the cot, but before she could open her mouth to chastise Lena for breaking one of her biggest rules, she caught a look of distress that was shared between the two and clamped her mouth shut. She was unable to overhear their hushed conversation, but she remained quietly by the door and waited to be acknowledged.

Because damn if she wasn’t going to try.

She was able to catch some words and fragments of sentences, some of them about trauma, some about nightmares, some about concerns for Amelie’s health that Angela hoped one of them would have the sense to carry on to her. It took them a minute to notice that she had entered the room, but when they did, Lena’s frown melted into a forced cheery grin and Amelie watched her with cautious and protective amber eyes.

“Ah, Angie, love, good to see you all rested up!” the Brit spoke in a tone that she supposed was meant to be taken as happy. “You got here just in time, too! See, Amelie and I were talking, and we think we’ve figured out why her resting heart rate is so slow.”

Angela had already decided to take any assumptions either of them made with a grain of salt, but she was quite intrigued by this development, so she figured she could humor them. The doctor sat down in the chair at the computer and watched both women with a raised eyebrow. “Very well. What do you think you have figured out?”

Certainly, she didn’t expect their answer to make as much sense as it did.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amelie has a lot of emotional baggage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> amelie and ana's friendship is v important to me

Amelie watched Angela with a quiet caution that she knew was probably unnecessary, as the kind doctor had been nothing but kind and helpful to her for the last few days that she had been stuck in the watchpoint and she was well aware that some of that assistance came at the price of a little bit of Angela’s own health, mental and physical. However, her capabilities of trust had been completely demolished by the entire incident; Lena was the only one that she was truly capable of leaning on anymore, and she wasn’t sure if that was quite healthy for either of them, but it was something.

Now that the communicator was gone from her head and she knew that she couldn’t be found guilty in any part of her husband’s death, Amelie allowed herself to relax; she knew that she could trust any one Overwatch agent more than all of Talon combined. However, with her ability to relax came fresh bouts of grief and seemingly endless nightmares about her husband dying in her arms. She found herself sobbing uncontrollably and inconsolably for hours whenever she thought of Gerard, and though her friends did their best to soothe her and try to ease her pain, she knew that every attempt was pointless - and a very large part of her almost felt that she deserved to be prosecuted.

She should have fought her urges just a little bit longer; she should have opened up about the thoughts she was having and gotten help for them. She should have remembered something about the time she spent in Talon that would have let her explain to Angela exactly what she was dealing with. Hell, she shouldn’t have gone grocery shopping on her own with the attempts on Gerard’s life being made so frequently - she was sure that Ana or Lena would have been available to go with her. She knew, logically, that she was not guilty in the least for her husband’s murder, but that did not stop her from mourning him and feeling as though she was entirely at fault for the whole debacle.

All of that, though, she pushed out of her head. She had confided in Lena why she thought that her heart was so much slower than it should have been; she remembered a rather intrusive surgery that had happened late into her time with Talon, and that was what she described. “They blocked off some of my arteries shortly before I was released. They explained it to me before they did it - they claimed that it was to make me dependent on them so that I would be more likely to come running back lest I have a heart attack, and that it was to slow my body and mind’s reactions to things.”

Lena gently squeezed her hand as she spoke, and Amelie kept her face void of any emotion or expression as she quietly watched Angela. The doctor stared at her for several seconds, seemingly shocked, before loudly cursing and rushing over to her notes to rifle through them. Amelie didn’t understand any of the German she murmured under her breath to herself, but tried to keep track of it anyway, trying to avoid panic now that she knew it was dangerous for her.

_ “Sie weiß vermutlich zu viel, um ohne Kontrolle zu gehen. Sie brauchten einen Weg, sie zur Rückkehr zu zwingen. Es macht Sinn. Warum glaubte ich nicht, dass die Herzfrequenz lustig war?”  _ she seemed to be speaking in a quick and scolding manner, and Amelie questioned what she was saying - but did not have enough time to before the doctor turned around to face her and Lena and began speaking in English once more.

“Okay, we should be able to fix the problem if you do end up having a heart attack, and it does not seem to be causing any issues in your daily life so far - but I am afraid that if I discharge you and you are permitted to walk around and live normally, it will trigger itself without warning and you won’t be at the base to get any sort of help. So I will not press the issue, but if I could get your consent I will operate on your heart and unblock the arteries. I understand if you are averse to surgery now, but I don’t think there’s another way to fix it.”

Amelie was, honestly, a little put off by the idea of being operated on again. She was sure that she would be no more than a pile of scars and emotional trauma by the time her life had settled down into at least a little bit of a routine again - and oh, how she longed to have her routine back. She wasn’t entirely sure if she even wanted to survive very long.

But she glanced at Lena before those thoughts could really come to fruition. Lena, who had found her curled up in a little ball and rescued her from her attempt to starve herself to death. Lena, who had defended her every step of the way and never once doubted her innocence. Lena, who was the only one that really knew how to continue to treat her like a normal human and not like a porcelain doll that was about to break at any moment. Lena, who would be crushed if she failed to take any sort of measure to prevent her very avoidable young death.

It was for Lena’s sake that she decided to, if nothing else, make a marked attempt to survive. Amelie took a deep breath, squeezed her friend’s hand softly, and looked to meet Angela’s eyes with her own amber gaze. “I suppose that I will have the problem taken care of now,” she spoke in a flat voice to mask how torn she was about the entire situation - most of her still wanted to die and join Gerard, but Lena’s soft hand on hers kept her tethered to survival instincts and reality. “I am willing when you are, Doctor Ziegler. I only request that I am unconscious the entire operation?”

“When have I ever kept you awake?” Angela questioned, her tone lighter than it had been before - Amelie guessed to try and pick up on Lena’s slacking in keeping the mood from getting too depressing - but she could see the relief hidden behind the doctor’s eyes. She was glad that Amelie was deciding to keep on top of her own health - and for the first time in a while, the former ballet dancer began to think that, maybe, she had more than one person that truly wanted her to recover.

* * *

 

When Amelie woke up from her surgery, her head was lead and it took several moments for her to truly get a handle on what was going on. When she did, she initially just realized that most of her body was numb, and that she could no longer tell whether the dull pain in her chest was from the operation she had just undergone or was from the pain that had lingered since Gerard’s death. The second thing she realized was that Lena was no longer in the darkened room, and that Angela was not present either - that was enough to lead her to believe that she was alone, and so she quickly tried to sit up in a panic with the intent to try and find where her friends had gone --

Only for a gentle hand to carefully catch her by the shoulder and lower her back into a laying position. It was then that Amelie realized that she was sleeping with her head using somebody’s lap as a pillow, and a small amount of fear and paranoia settled over her mind before the very familiar voice of Ana spoke up behind her.

“I am assuming you do not remember, but I told Angela and Lena to get some sleep a while ago. It is nearly one in the morning, Amelie.” The older woman spoke with a voice that radiated motherly vibes and calm, and Amelie found it somewhat easy to relax with her friend gently petting her hair down. “They will be back in the morning, but for the moment I’m afraid you are stuck with just Captain Amari. I’m sure that’s quite devastating news for you.” There was a small amount of joking sarcasm behind her tone, so Amelie didn’t bother responding.

For a while, she just laid in the calmest state she had been in for a while, amber gaze focused up on the tiles of the ceiling as she enjoyed the company of her friend. This was probably the most casual they had been for a while, which Amelie was glad for - her own parents had died in a car accident when she was just eighteen years old, shortly after she eloped with Gerard, and Ana had been something of a motherly figure to her since. “I’ve missed you,” she murmured softly, not bothering to turn her gaze to the older woman. “It’s been too long.”

“I have been in to see you nearly every day since you got here,” Ana scoffed slightly, though there was a bit of sadness behind her tone. Amelie could only hope that she got what she had meant - that she missed the calm company that the two of them often kept over tea, or in times like this. She missed Ana in the sense that she missed not being walked on eggshells around. “I have missed you too, though, Amelie. I’m sorry about my recent behavior. I truly don’t have an excuse.”

If Amelie could read Ana’s mind, perhaps she would have known that the older woman had been a little afraid of her - afraid that she was only playing the part of heartbroken widow to get into Overwatch’s base to find out more about the inner workings, afraid of anybody that could murder their spouse without a second thought because of some intrusive impulses, and maybe even bewildered at the idea of being friends with someone who she had just recently failed to keep safe. But Amelie could not read Ana’s mind, so she was only aware of the extended silence that passed between them.

“Ana?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Do you think Gerard is angry with me, wherever he is now?”

She wasn’t entirely sure where the question had come from, and immediately she wanted to take it back - she didn’t even believe in an afterlife beforehand, but with her husband being gone, it became a thought that softened the blow. She knew that Gerard had been a part of Blackwatch, far separate from Ana, but he had worked with the organization long enough that the sniper had considered him - and, by extension, Amelie - a part of her family, so she was sure that Ana would know the answer.

“Absolutely not,” Ana responded without even a second’s hesitation, her tone almost implying that the question had been a silly one. “Gerard loved you very much, Amelie. He talked about you so often that we often got a little tired of it. Wherever he is now, he knows that what happened wasn’t your choice or your fault, and I’m sure that he misses you as fiercely as you miss him. Though I’m sure that if it had been totally voluntary, he still would have easily forgiven you. You were the love of his life, Amelie, and you would do good to never forget it.”

Emotion bubbled up in Amelie’s throat as her friend spoke, and though she tried to choke down the sobs to wait until she had a moment of privacy again, she couldn’t help but let a strangled noise of grief rip its way through her throat almost as soon as Ana stopped talking. The waterworks followed almost immediately, and she began to cry a little harder than was probably healthy for her at the moment. She missed Gerard; she wanted him back so much that it  **hurt,** and she felt so terrible about being the cause of his gentle soul no longer being her that the pain was excruciating.

Ana sat with her the entire time she sobbed like a baby, gently smoothing her hair and murmuring gentle Arabic to try and calm her down. It was with her comfort that Amelie was eventually able to stop and relax again, and the moment her crying had died down to hiccups she was sleepy and emotionally drained again.

“Go ahead and get some sleep. I will protect you until you wake.”

It was with that promise that Amelie was able to drift off to the first dreamless and peaceful slumber that she had experienced in days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please keep commenting, thank you for the feedback so far <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena is forced to take a break, gets decent advice from Reyes, and steals a plane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if this chap is sloppy it's kinda a filler chap bc stuff is gonna start getting real soon

It took several hours for her to be coaxed down to her quarters to get some much needed sleep, and Lena swore that she was only supposed to sleep for six hours - no more and no less. With any luck, she would be back in the med ward before Amelie was even awake, and her friend would never notice her absence! Her plan was genius, if she did say so herself, so she had very few qualms about laying down face first on her bed and drifting off to Dreamland nearly the very moment her head hit the (somewhat uncomfortable) pillow.

She couldn’t deny that she was exhausted, and she wasn’t even going to try. Amelie was a little bit tiring to be friends with at the moment, given that she was on high risk suicide watch on Angela’s orders and could barely last through a ten minute conversation without suddenly going quiet or bursting into tears. Lena needed to skirt around topics that she knew might trigger a reaction, and that threw out pretty much everything that she knew Amelie enjoyed at all - but still, she did her best, and she adored her friend too much to just abandon her in her time of need because she was getting tired. So they had devolved to watching television shows on Lena’s cell phone and just spending time together.

Even that didn’t work out perfectly, though. If a character shared any features with Gerard, Amelie would clam up. If it took place in a location similar to the house the Lacroixes owned in France or their temporary home in Gibraltar, Amelie would start crying. Hell, if a message hit her too hard, Amelie would be in tears within seconds. She was never a particularly emotional person before she was kidnapped by Talon - or at least, wasn’t open about her feelings - so this was a very startling development that Lena honestly didn’t know what to do with.

Ana was the one that got her to take a break, and honestly, she would probably be grateful for arguably the most maternal person on base. She knew that the sniper cared for Amelie Lacroix as much as Lena did, but she was still hesitant mainly due to her friend’s confiding in her that everything was different with Ana now - but with a lot of reassurance and quite a few stern looks, she was eventually convinced to go to her quarters and sleep. Which was exactly what she did.

For a day straight.

Admittedly, she hadn’t slept much at all in the several days since Amelie was brought to the watchpoint, which probably contributed greatly to how long she was passed out for, but that didn’t lessen her confusion and then utter terror when she looked at the red digits of her assigned alarm clock and found out that it was seven in the morning and a full thirty one hours after she had gone to sleep. Lena shot upright with all the speed of a bullet and scrambled out of bed, not bothering to change out of her quite self righteous Slipstream Program t-shirt and Overwatch logo boxers as she sprinted out of her quarters and down the long hallways leading to the medical ward.

When she shoved open the door to Amelie’s room, she noticed that the Frenchwoman was sitting up and looking a lot more rested and refreshed than she had the last time Lena saw her, Ana in a chair beside the bed. She wasn’t sure if she was more happy that her friend was feeling better or jealous that she hadn’t been the one to get her looking so much better. “Nice outfit,” Ana commented, a grin on her face as she rose to her feet and walked over to Lena. “I think you should go get changed and get some coffee or something, though. You’re supposed to be taking a break.”

The pilot scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest. “I was supposed to get some sleep! I wanna be with Amelie, really. She’s my best friend, and I just wanna be here for her and help her.” She pouted, hoping that Ana would be swayed - but the sniper just rolled her eyes and continued leading her out of the room. “I slept for more than thirty hours, come on.”

“Yes, but you look like a mess, child. You’re not helping anything or anyone by showing up everywhere still in your pajamas and with your hair looking like something died on your head. Go clean yourself up. Angela and I are with her, and you should worry about yourself first.” With that, Ana practically pushed Lena out of the room and back to the hallway, and while she was still stunned at being kicked out, closed the door. This left the pilot staring at the closed wooden barrier, trying to wrap her head around the fact that she had just been  _ prevented _ from being around her  _ traumatized best friend. _

Of course, she kind of knew that Ana was right - she was stressing herself out too much by spending every moment she could at Amelie’s side, and she knew that she was barely taking care of herself by chugging coffee at every opportunity and allowing Amelie to tell her anything without any consideration to her own mental health. Lena supposed that it was best for her to just take a few hours or even a day off from trying to take care of her best friend.

She was supposed to pilot the new Slipstream jet in just a month, after all. She needed to make sure she was healthy and ready for that when it happened, even though she liked to tell herself that she had plenty of time and didn’t need to stress about it quite yet. The technology on the jet was brand new, and she needed to be awake and ready to test it properly or risk getting hurt or something malfunctioning, which she absolutely did not want anything to do with.

And as much as she loved Amelie, if she drained all of her energy and life taking care of the slightly older woman, she would be far too exhausted to drive a jet, let alone a time travelling one. She needed to take care of herself, as terrible as she felt about knowing it, and so she didn’t put up a fight - instead of breaking down the door and arguing with Ana, she just shrugged with a heavy sigh and decided to walk back to her quarters down the hallway and get a change of clothes to start with.

* * *

 

Gabriel Reyes was, in the eyes of most people, a pretty scary man. He ran the Blackwatch operation, he glowered at pretty much everybody except occasionally someone he considered a friend (usually Morrison, Angela, or Jesse), and he had quite the colorful arrangement of scars. The people who worked with him or spent more time than most around him, however, knew better - and Lena was among those people. He was a little scary, sure, but he was a hell of a lot less scary of a boss than Morrison, and he was a lot more patient with his employees as well. He was just intimidating and very dramatic.

Most of the time, actually, Lena kind of wished that Morrison was the one working with Blackwatch so that she could be hired under Reyes. As much as she liked her commander, he wasn’t fun to work for. And he certainly wasn’t the type to sit down next to her when she was staring at her coffee in the break room, as Gabriel Reyes had just done, glancing at her momentarily with dark eyes before planting himself in the chair next to hers and waiting to see if she was going to talk.

“I just wish I could help her more.”

She wasn’t sure what led her to spill her guts to one of the shadiest men working for the organization she loved so much, but for one reason or another Lena found herself ranting to Reyes in the break room between cups of coffee. By the time she finished her rant, she had consumed three mugs of the liquid caffeine and was feeling a lot lighter - Reyes, to his credit, listened fairly attentively, even if it was probably weird to have some scraggly teenager he barely considered a friend talk for so long about the widow that killed one of his best soldiers and closest comrades.

“You’re doing everything you can, Oxton,” was all Reyes said in return, getting up and getting himself a cup of coffee from the almost empty pot. He gave her another once over, and then walked to the door of the break room. “No questions or arguments. I’m not convinced of Mrs. Lacroix’s innocence, but I know she’s lucky to have you. Find something to do. Stop taking up space in here and drinking all the coffee.” With that, he left, and Lena was alone in the room once again.

She huffed slightly, not sure how to react to actually getting decent advice from a man feared by most of Overwatch, but decided that she might as well take it. She was trying - a little too hard, maybe, but she supposed that was better than putting in minimal effort. She didn’t mean to mistreat and neglect herself for the sake of her best friend, but in the eyes of everyone else (including, probably, honesty), she was doing exactly that - and if Angela’s hypocritical rants about how much stress affected the human body and mentality, that was about as far from a good thing as one could get.

She had been ordered to take the day off, and she found it progressively less hard to follow that order as the day went on. She actually ate reasonably healthily for the first time since  _ long _ before Amelie had been brought to the watchpoint, she caught up on the episodes of her favorite television shows she had missed, she watched the Hal-fred Glitchbot movie she had been meaning to get around to. She also may or may not have snuck into the hangar with the intent to take a jet out for a joyride before anybody realized that she had left the main area of the base.

Lena always felt more natural when she was in the air, and she was itching to realize that feeling as soon as she possibly could. She was, technically speaking, breaking the law by entering the hangar when she wasn’t authorized to, especially when she was climbing into a jet and starting it up, but she had never really been one to care about such silly things as rules she needed to follow. She was somebody that was focused on trying to find the next great adventure, the next rush of adrenaline and dopamine that hit her when she was doing something risky.

She knew how to fly every single plane that could be found on the Overwatch base. She’d always had a gift with flying, but the months of research she had done as a nerdy teenager passing high school by the skin of her teeth probably aided her knowing how to navigate her way around every model. She knew exactly which switches to flip as she settled into the sleek aircraft that was used mostly for skirting around enemy territory quickly and silently, and she knew how to get started as she gripped the steering mechanisms and lifted off of the ground, glancing up to make sure that the ceiling was separating to allow her through before zipping off into the air.

Morrison would have her ass for this as soon as she landed, but for the time being, Lena Oxton was as free as a bird and could enjoy the view of the ocean that she had from high up in the air.

Her heartbeat sped up for a moment, but as she just sat and set the plane into autopilot so it would stay in place she found her breathing slowing and her body relaxing. There were few things that had quite this affect on her, and…

Well, she  _ had _ been told to relax. This was as relaxing as it got.

And a quick trip to a few different countries wouldn’t hurt anybody.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the slipstream incident hasnt happened... yet... but it will in the near future.........


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amelie is making progress. Slowly, but surely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you may have noticed there is an end chapter in the plan now!!! that is because i actually got my act together and planned this entire fic out on the bus this morning. so now i have an actual outline and a writing schedule!!!! yay!
> 
> the fic's main events will span from where this fic started up until shortly after the swiss base explosion.
> 
> widowtracer is the main ship, but there will be background pharmercy later on!!!

“What day is it?”

“The first of February, two thousand and sixty seven.”

“What is your name?”

“Amelie Lacroix.”

“How old are you?”

“I am twenty three years old.”

“Who is in this room with you?”

“Angela Ziegler, Ana Amari, Fareeha Amari, and Lena Oxton.”

Though the interview of basic questions might have looked a little silly to anyone else, Amelie found that it was helping to ground her in the present day better than anything else anybody had tried did. She could feel the panic that had begun to build in her chest start to dissipate, her vision becoming clearer and her breathing a more reasonable pace.

The widow took a moment to let herself relax and calm back down, sitting silently and feeling a little uncomfortable with the eyes of every other woman in the room on her. Amelie had found herself mentally recovering a little bit, her mind becoming less bogged down by self loathing and the numbness that had become most of her personality recently leaving. Unfortunately, however, that meant that it was easier for her to cry and have anxiety attacks and just generally suffer for what she did. She knew that she didn’t deserve it, that she hadn’t had a choice, but that didn’t stop her for blaming herself.

Gerard was dead. There was no changing the past, and there was no bringing him back. Amelie wished that she had fought back harder, or that she had resisted her reconditioning long enough to be rescued and return to normal without being so achingly different and damaged from who she had been before. She didn’t know that she was even Amelie anymore; she felt weird using the surname she had received from a man she killed. These had been the thoughts that caused her to panic so thoroughly - and those had just been triggered by the simple action of somebody calling her  _ Mrs. Lacroix. _

With so many different people around her, though, she felt the need to force herself to calm down and stop panicking immediately. She trusted Angela, Ana, and Lena, after all, and she was decent enough friends with Fareeha that she felt no need to be cautious around her - but she was tired of being treated like she was a porcelain doll that could break at any moment, and she needed to act like she was much more mentally stable than she really was if she ever wanted to be let out from the watchpoint and go home; she wanted to return to Annecy.

She would have to leave the people she trusted if she wanted to go home, but honestly, it seemed like a worthy sacrifice. She wanted to leave behind the stain on her life that Overwatch and Talon had left her with, even if that meant she needed to start over again in her hometown and deal with the stares that she would probably get from the people she had grown up around. Maybe she could take the money she got from insurance and what pensions she was receiving from Overwatch to move to Paris, but she longed for the familiarity and mountains of Annecy.

Of course, she knew that she would probably be unable to. As soon as she was a little bit better off than she was right now, she would need to deal with questioning and answer questions about anything she might remember about her time with Talon; she might be discharged from the hospital, but she probably would be unwise to leave the general area of the watchpoint. She felt sick at the idea of sleeping in the house she had shared with her husband; maybe she could sell the house, take the money she would inherit, get herself a smaller house…

“Amelie, you’re zoning out again, dear.” Ana’s voice broke her out of her silent thinking, and she blinked slightly before meeting the kind and worried eyes of her friend. “We don’t want you going unresponsive again. You need to keep talking to us, okay?” There was a frown on her face, and even though Amelie was a little annoyed at having been spoken to in such a condescending way, she felt fairly guilty for being the reason that anybody was that worried… especially Ana, a sniper and mother with a lot more things to worry about than a traumatized friend.

There was the self loathing again, though Amelie didn’t acknowledge it openly. She just nodded in response, running one hand through her dark hair - she was beginning to consider getting it cut again, just so that it would be easier to manage than it was right now when she was eventually discharged. “I apologize. I was… just thinking. Thank you for helping me to calm down.” Her voice was calm and unshaken, and she was honestly impressed with herself. She was beginning to get good at concealing her emotions; she would never get rid of them completely, but she could be stony and closed off.

“You’re welcome,” Fareeha Amari responded quickly, and glanced at her mother for confirmation before going to face Amelie once more. Said widow raised an eyebrow, curious about what was going to be announced that needed Ana’s approval. “As we were about to say, you missed out on Gerard’s funeral. We were all talking earlier, and we think it might be… helpful for you to visit his grave tomorrow. Lena would go with you, so you can have some time together before she goes on the Slipstream test in a few days. Would you be open to that?”

_ No, _ she wanted to declare. She was not ready. She did not think that she would ever be ready. She remembered killing her husband with her own two hands every night; she remembered watching the life fade from his eyes every time she closed her eyes. She missed him dearly, and she longed to be able to move back in time and stop herself from carrying out the act. She would never be able to go and visit his gravestone, and she would never be worthy of loving him again.

However, she did want to spend time with Lena, and she did want to get out of the watchpoint. This was her first chance in a long time, and if she handled it well maybe she would be let out of the med bay sooner. So she hesitated, looking over to the expectant smile of her best friend before giving a firm nod. “All right,” she confirmed, sounding much more sure than she was actually feeling. Far more put together than she knew she was truly capable of. “As… as long as Dr. Ziegler says it is alright.”

“I confirmed that it’s fine before they even brought it up to you.” Angela had a smile on her face, if a very tired one, and that was how Amelie knew that she had responded correctly. “I will arrange for you to be allowed out for most of the day, too, so that you can have time to walk around Gibraltar instead of just sitting around in the graveyard. I think it will be best for you to get up and move around - you have been here for nearly a month, and your mental health can only recover so much here.”

Ah. That made sense, even if Amelie found it just a little bit weird. She supposed that a doctor would know a little bit more about health and medical junk than a recently widowed ballet dancer would. She knew that she hadn’t exactly made a lot of progress since she started talking; maybe a little bit, considering she was now capable of more emotions than pure agony when everything was particularly calm, so it made sense that Angela might want to try something else.

There were old sayings stating that just some fresh air and sunshine could do wonders for someone’s happiness and mental health, and though Amelie doubted she would ever be truly  _ happy _ again, she had to agree with the idea that getting out of the room she had been confined to would surely improve her mood a little bit. Maybe she wouldn’t even have to be at the graveyard for very long; she could just visit, cry a little, and go out with Lena to spend the rest of the day finding something more entertaining to do. It was all going to be fine; it would help, she was sure.

She was almost… excited, even.

“Excellent!” Angela’s smile was so wide that Amelie was convinced that her face was about to split in half. The widow supposed she would be glad if her friend was cooperating with an idea to help her move forward with her life, too. “Fareeha and I are going to go take care of something, and I think Ana has a mission to go on, but I will be back soon to let you know how long you’ll be allowed outside tomorrow and what time you’ll be able to leave. Thank you for cooperating, Amelie.”

The young woman nodded, and watched as most of the people that had been in the room dispersed - she and Lena were alone then, and as soon as the door had closed the younger woman plopped down onto the cot beside her. Amelie grunted slightly in annoyance as the bed shifted under Lena’s weight. “Don’t worry, I’ll sneak you out into some places other than the cemetery. I don’t think Morrison will confirm that you can go out on the town, but honestly - and don’t tell him I told you - he and Gabe aren’t totally convinced that you’re good and want to keep you locked up. Angela and I have been jumping through rings to try and get you clearance for some other things, and I think they’re gonna crack soon. They have to eventually.”

Amelie nodded slowly, sitting up straight so that she could fold her legs into a lotus position. “I do not blame them. I am not completely convinced that I am good, either,” she sighed slightly, resting her chin in her hand. “I am looking forward to going out with you, though. I have been feeling rather trapped in here. And I am a little worried that your Slipstream test may result in us not being able to talk for a while. You’re going to be awfully busy with being a hero.”

“I dunno about that! I didn’t build the thing, I’m just gonna fly it.” She sounded rather excited about the project, and Amelie was ready to ask her a question about it just so that she could listen to her ramble and drown out the thoughts that liked to press against the outer boundaries of her mind so quickly. She didn’t have to, though, because Lena just started talking again without being prompted.

“It’s  _ so _ cool, Amelie. I know I’ve told you a little about it before, but it’s really awesome that Overwatch’s scientists managed to figure out  _ time travel. _ People thought it was impossible for so long ‘cause of the huge amount of energy that it takes up, but it’s actually a thing that can happen, and  _ I’m _ gonna be the one that goes and tests it! I’m not going to go too far back in time, just a few days to listen in on some information and repeat it, but I’m going to tell you  _ everything _ that goes on while I’m there. Not… not the information, but what the flight’s like.”

The widow managed the smallest possible laugh at the endless enthusiasm of her friend, and was barely aware of the small amount of warm affection in her chest. “I look forward to hearing your report, Oxton,” she responded with a smile. “I just know that you are going to be terribly busy with all of the press that is going to surround you. We should try to have a nice day tomorrow, even if I am rather sad from… visiting the grave.”

“I understand, Ames,” Lena’s voice was a little softer than it usually was, her smile a little sadder. “But I’m gonna make sure you have fun, okay? I promise.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amelie visits Gerard's grave and hangs out with Lena.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if this is a little sloppy i feel like my writing's been very off lately

_ Here Lies Gerard Lacroix _

_ Overwatch Operative, Husband, Friend _

_ Born 6/23/2040 _

_ Died 1/13/2067 _

If Amelie did not remember his death clearly and did not know for a fact that this grave belonged to her husband, this moment would not have seemed real. She had to run her fingers against the letters carved out into the slab of stone, reading the inscription over and over again just to make sure that, yes, this was where Gerard was buried. That, yes, he was rotting nine feet down in the cold, cold earth, and that he would never come back and chide her for worrying so much this time.

Her heart was aching in her chest, and her brain couldn’t decide whether she wanted to cry or collapse or maybe both. Lena stood a ways behind her, leaning on a statue of an angel that stood tall and guarded over the cemetery; she had left Amelie alone with her grief when asked to do so, but was close by enough that all the widow needed to do was call out to her and she would be there in the blink of an eye. She wanted to give the impression that she was strong and put together, that she didn’t need to lean on her best friend. She wanted to recover, even though she felt ill just looking at the headstone.

She sank slowly to her knees, and found that the position was just a little more comfortable than standing and bending over had been. Amelie read his name again, once, twice, three times. She glanced at the plot of land beside it, where she was meant to be buried someday when she died; the closest she could ever hope to get to her husband again, unless there was such thing as a heaven after all.

Not that she would be going there with this incident under her belt.

She knelt in silence at his grave for a time, wanting to cry but unable to do much besides try to swallow down the lump in her throat. Amelie missed Gerard desperately, and she was sure that she would be missing him for a very long time going into the future, but… there was nothing she could do that would bring him back, and if there wasn’t anything she could use to remedy the situation then there was no point in lingering on it. She needed to keep living, even if she had to force herself.

The issue was that she knew that wasn’t healthy, and she knew that Angela would scold her if she tried to say anything about it - she had been through a lot of trauma, she was grieving, she needed to heal from all of this instead of pushing it down and pretending that it didn’t exist. Amelie knew all of this, she just… preferred to try to distract herself with other things so that she didn’t have to think about it until she was ready. She had spent enough time trying to recover the “right” way.

After giving herself just a moment, she rose to her feet and brushed the mud off of her shins - the snow had been melted away from this part of the graveyard, leaving only a mess of mud and slush that she found disgusting but would have to live with. “I am ready to go now,  _ cherie. _ Let’s go do something else,” she announced, masking how much she was suffering once more with a face void of expression and her arms crossed over her chest. She just needed to get out of there, and Lena had been hinting at a surprise for her, which she was pretty curious about.

“Alright!” Lena responded with her usual cheerfulness, jumping up to her feet and giving Amelie a wide grin. The widow felt herself begin to smile softly, and happily cooperated when the younger linked their arms together and began leading her out of the cemetery. However, at the edge of the grounds, she seemed to hesitate - Lena looked to Amelie with her eyebrows furrowed and an expression of concern. “Are… you sure, though?” she asked in a voice that was softer than Amelie was used to hearing from her.

“I am sure,” the widow sighed slightly, taking one look back at the cemetery before giving her friend a firm nod and small smile. “I just want to get out of here, Lena. Really. Graveyards have always scared me.” That wasn’t the entire truth - she was afraid that if she lingered beside Gerard’s headstone for too long, she would have a meltdown, and she did not want that to happen in front of Lena. She was still determined to make it through this day in one piece, completely mentally stable, and prove to those in charge of her that she was healing and could leave the Overwatch base.

“I guess I’ll take your word for it, love,” the pilot was smiling softly, and led Amelie the rest of the way out of the cemetery and towards the car that they had borrowed for the day.

As Lena drove them away from the road beside the graveyard, Amelie couldn’t help but look back one more time, looking out over the quiet and somber grounds. She quietly kept her view on Gerard’s tombstone until it was out of view; and once she was just staring back at the fence, she turned to watch ahead instead. There; it was behind her now.

* * *

 

She just needed to wonder whether it would  _ stay _ behind her.

“Okay, no peeking!” Lena announced, planting one hand over Amelie’s eyes after they made another turn. The widow made a sound of annoyance and tried to bat her friend’s hand away to no avail, and had to laugh ever so slightly at what she assumed was a bad effort to try and leave the car without letting the taller of the two look at where they were going. She had to promise that she wouldn’t take a look and close her eyes before the pilot would even consider taking her hand off.

“I am not as fond of surprises as you must think I am,  _ cherie,” _ Amelie spoke up in an amused tone, keeping her own hand over her eyes and allowing Lena to hold onto her hand and pull her along. She had not been allowed to see where they pulled up, but she was aware that they were walking on cement, and that they were heading into a large and cold room that wind could be heard from - she didn’t need to wonder long, though, because the young woman stopped walking with her after a moment.

She felt Lena move behind her and put her hands on her shoulders before she removed her hand from her eyes, and blinked slightly. Before her was a very,  _ very _ old-looking biplane, orange in color with a sonic blue nose and wings. Amelie was fascinated by history, far more than she was interested in planes, but she was pretty sure that biplanes hadn’t been in widespread use in decades. “Lena, this is amazing,” was all she could think to comment, walking forward slightly to get a closer look.

“I figured we could go up for a quick flight,” the shorter of the two announced, bouncing slightly with excitement; Amelie figured she must have been so giddy to have found something that fit with both of their interests. “This baby’s really old, it’s all the way from World War I a hundred and fifty years ago, but I’ve made sure it’s all patched up. I got ahold of it when a world history museum was destroyed during the Crisis, repainted it, and fixed everything up with some help from Torb.” Lena looked so proud of herself as she talked about the plane, putting one hand against its metal body with love in her eyes that was almost amusing to Amelie.

“I’m impressed,” the widow spoke, a smile appearing on her face as Lena clapped her hands excitedly and grabbed onto her arm, skipping over to the plane. It took Amelie just a moment to figure out that her friend intended to take her on a flight, and for just a second she was afraid that going into the air in an old and possibly unsafe plane would end up with her getting hurt; however, she trusted Lena’s abilities as a pilot, and she trusted that she wouldn’t take her for a trip in anything that wasn’t a hundred percent safe and secure.

So she climbed up with a little help from Lena, seating herself comfortably in the back seat of the plane and watching as her friend followed to take hold of the controls in front of her. “Okay, ready, love?” she asked, putting a pair of sunglasses over her hazel eyes and looking back to a somewhat nervous Amelie - the older of the two hesitated just a moment, but nodded firmly in response, keeping a careful eye on what Lena was doing so that she at least could convince herself she knew what was going on. That might help her feel a little more secure.

It didn’t occur to her, though maybe it should have, that she was afraid of death again - that she was aware of her mortality again instead of just being apathetic to whether she died in an instant or lived to see another day. She didn’t realize that it was a big deal that she had some sort of self preservation back, that she wasn’t convinced that she would be better off dead anymore.

There was a bit of a shaky takeoff, and then they were in the air. Amelie wasn’t particularly afraid of heights, but they were in the sky so suddenly that she couldn’t help but clutch the side of the plane and stare down at the ground, at the people on the ground becoming smaller and smaller and the tall buildings around them seem shorter as they rose through them. The widow was used to flying, as she had done so several times to go between Paris for her ballet career and Gibraltar to be with her husband, but the view was so much more visible and just  _ nicer _ without having to look through windows.

It crossed Amelie’s mind for just a moment that this was a romantic gesture, like something out of one of the novels she read to help her fall asleep, but she pushed that thought from her head almost the moment after it appeared. She may have been a hopeless romantic, but she was recently widowed, and no matter whether she felt more alive than she had since Gerard died… she figured it was far too soon. Not to mention Lena was nothing more than her best friend; she had never had thoughts about her of that caliber before.  _ It’s just because you’re happy, _ she told herself.

“I suppose I can understand why you chose to be a pilot now,” Amelie commented, raising an eyebrow at Lena and finding herself smirking just a little bit… only for a bit of terror to take over when she realized that her friend was not paying attention to what she was doing. “Though I doubt that you are supposed to be looking down at the ground like that. Keep your eyes forward.” She tried to sound like she wasn’t terrified of crashing, but was sure she failed.

“Don’t worry about it, Ames!” Lena quipped almost as soon as she had voiced her concerns, shifting her attention to just ahead of them if only to make Amelie feel better. “Flying’s as natural as walking for me! If I ever crash a plane, I’ll eat my sunglasses. Assuming I’m not dead first.”

“I’m holding you to that,  _ cherie. _ Remind me to write it down as soon as we land.”

She was just teasing - and for the moment, she was content to just watch the world for above until they had to come down to earth and reality once more.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena's best day ever turns very quickly into the polar opposite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry if this chapter is sloppy!!! everything before the skip was done in a rush during class. i read through it to try and edit but there was nothing i could really fix, it just felt off??? and i ain't rewriting 1500 words of this no sir

This was it. The moment that she had been waiting for since she signed on. Scratch that, the moment she had been waiting for since her uncle taught her how to fly.

Lena Oxton looked up at the Slipstream, allowed herself to reach out and run her fingers along its graceful, lightweight metal body and her expression to become one of wonder. She was barely listening as Winston went on and on about safety procedures and the like; she had heard it all before, she had been preparing for this moment for weeks, and now that it was  _ here, _ she could think of nothing other than what was necessary to running the aircraft.

Maybe she should have been paying more attention, but she was pretty sure that everything would be fine. She knew the engineers that worked on the plane, and she considered them friends; she trusted them to build a good machine, and she trusted the way that they built it. Morrison had assured her over and over that everything would be fine, that all she needed to do was test it to make sure that the time travel was working and that there was an  _ extremely _ small chance of crashing.

That was good, because nobody was entirely sure of what would happen if the Slipstream were to crash. Odds were she would die, but there were so many other possibilities that absolutely nobody wanted to explore. Time travel was new; she would be travelling between all sorts of different timelines and points, and even if she wasn’t going back very far and was only trying to get some basic information, she would be in a highly dangerous and vulnerable spot for a little while just as she was taking off. That was the part that scared her; that was the part she had to sign a liability form for.

She wasn’t scared anymore, though; she was just excited. The wait for Commander Morrison and anybody that might want to see her off was agony, even if it was her own fault for showing up an hour early; half an hour before she even needed to report for takeoff. “You’re awfully jumpy,” Winston commented, his deep voice communicating amusement as he smiled at Lena, who seemed to be unable to calm herself down and sit still. “Hopefully this whole thing goes smoothly. Make sure you keep calm and try to do everything according to the rules, okay? Don’t try to do any tricks.”

“I won’t, big guy!” the young woman responded with enthusiasm, a bright grin on her face as she turned from the plane in order to face her friend. “I’ll be super careful, I promise. I know all the emergency procedures, and I’ve been flying planes since I was a kid and woulda been arrested for even looking at a cockpit, let alone being in it.” She adjusted the sunglasses that rested on her nose so that they rested a little more comfortable - more of a fashion decision than anything, but also in case the bright blue light of time travel got to be too intense.

“I know. I’m just a little worried about you.” Winston shrugged, hauling himself up to the sturdy wing and seating himself there. Most of the time, Lena would be concerned about a gorilla sitting on her plane, but she knew that the Slipstream was built from stronger materials than most other planes of its look. It was meant to be stronger than most other aircrafts, to protect it from being torn apart by time, so she doubted that Winston would be able to break it all by himself. “You’re the first pilot to test the Slipstream, and I know you’re talented and all, but if the plane is faulty…”

“It’s not!” she interrupted, gently patting the nose of the Slipstream as if it were her baby. “Come on, you told me yourself that she was built by Overwatch’s best engineers. I’ll be back safe and sound before you even realize I’m gone, I promise!”

Winston gave a faint chuckle and ruffled her already messy hair, very nearly crushing Lena’s head underneath his massive hand and causing her to squawk in annoyance. “I know, I know. I’m just worried. You’re my friend; I have a right to be, you know.”

She was about to give a snarky response, but before she could even say a word she was cut off by the massive and heavy metal door to the hangar sliding open. Lena quickly turned around, a bright smile on her face, and watched as Morrison and Angela took their sweet, sweet time in walking to the Slipstream - and to the pilot’s pleasant surprise, Amelie walked just behind them, looking a little shy and awkward in being in front of an operation that was publicized but not open to most civilians. Excitement thrummed in her chest, and she was trying to avoid bouncing.

“Okay, Oxton. I’m sure you know what your mission is.” Morrison’s voice was bored and monotone, moreso than usual, and that alone was enough to instill confidence in Lena that this mission was going to go spectacularly well. “You are to go a few hours forward in time and receive the information that Captain Amari is going to be holding for you. Return here, to about the same time - a few minutes’ difference is fine - and give the information to me. You do this well, and you’ll be the first official pilot of the Slipstream line.”

“Yessir!” Lena declared, saluting with a wide grin. She couldn’t wait to jump into the plane and get behind the wheel - and she was just turning to climb up when her wrist was grabbed and she was stopped from going all the way. With wide eyes, she turned around, and was met by Amelie, who was smiling ever so slightly but looked even more worried than Winston had allowed himself to be out loud. “Come on, love, I’ll be back in a few minutes, don’t give me that look.”

“I know you will,” Amelie responded, her voice perhaps a little more quiet than was completely necessary. “I just wanted to say goodbye, that’s all.” Thin arms wrapped and tightened around Lena, and she was pulled close to the Frenchwoman - the pilot took a moment to just slow herself down, squeezing the older woman ever so slightly before she peeled away. To her surprise, Amelie pressed a kiss against her cheek, making her blush redder than a tomato. “Come back safe and sound,  _ cherie. _ And make sure you come and see me so you can tell me all about it.”

“I will, I promise,” Lena managed to speak without stammering, gave Amelie a bright smile, and waved to Morrison and Winston before finally climbing into the cockpit of the Slipstream. Nerves making her jittery and even causing her to tremble ever so slightly, the pilot sank into her designated seat, running her hands over the wheel and various buttons that were presented to her - after she had taken off, she was to press the green button in order to push herself ahead in time. It would be easy; easier than just letting autopilot take over on a long flight over the ocean.

There was a crackling above her, and Morrison’s voice came through into the cockpit. “Okay, Oxton, you’re going to be without communications to avoid interfering with the signal. You’re ready to go when you’re ready. If there’s an emergency and the alarm doesn’t go off for any reason, manually set it off and we’ll do our best to retrieve you. Stay calm, and stay safe. Over and out.”

Slowly, almost  _ hesitantly, _ Lena took the controls to the plane in her hands and pulled up into the air, lifting out of the hangar with slowly growing speed. She shot forward like a bullet, pressing the button to teleport quickly and zipping between timelines.

Moments into her flight, however, she realized that something was wrong.

The plane flickered back into time, and the alarm blared above her, red lights flashing around the cockpit. Lena looked around in a panic, eyes wide, and glanced down at the controls in her hands, staring at her hands as she noticed them slowly becoming transparent. She was barely aware that she couldn’t touch it; she could barely notice that she was becoming a ghost, too in shock for anything to really process. The last thing she was aware of was that she couldn’t slow the plane down, she couldn’t change anything, and she was headed straight for a building.

Lena screamed, and everything went black.

* * *

 

Eventually, she woke up, if the term “awake” could even be applied to her at the moment.

Everything surrounding her was black. Lena rose to her feet, shaking slightly and struggling to swallow down the vomit that threatened to bubble past her throat. The plane was gone, and so, it seemed, was Gibraltar - she questioned if she was dead, because all that was around her was blank void that seemingly stretched on forever. She was scared - no, she was terrified.

Lena dug into her arm with her nails, giving a slight hiss of pain when she succeeded in pinching herself. Okay, if she could feel that, then she was neither dreaming nor dead. So where was she, then? The pilot struggled to keep from panicking, deciding that it might be best to just sit down where she was and wait for Morrison or Ana or Reyes or anybody at all to come find her. As long as she kept calm, she would be fine, she told herself. She just needed to remain relaxed and try to look to the bright side of things, and everything would turn out okay.

She sank to sit down with crossed legs on the cold ground, closing her eyes and humming a quiet tune in an attempt to keep herself distracted. She supposed she must have sounded like something out of a horror movie, the eerie silence and complete emptiness keeping her voice from echoing or travelling very far. Eventually, she managed to breathe in and out in a slow and calm pattern, and she could feel the thrumming of her heart slow down to a relaxed, quieter rhythm.

When she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the void, but in the familiar halls of the Overwatch base. Lena looked around with wide eyes, starting to believe that it had been nothing but a bad dream, but before she could completely convince herself of that she noticed that McCree was walking down the hall, seemingly quite morose. “Oi, Jesse! Why the long face?” she shouted out, a small grin on her face due to her relief as she raised a hand to wave enthusiastically to him.

He ignored her.

_ Rude, _ Lena thought to herself, and jogged forward to catch up to the cowboy. She reached out to grab onto his shoulder and force him to face her, but was surprised when she felt nothing but warmth on her hand. With wide eyes, she pulled her arm back, before trying again to reach for her friend.

She couldn’t touch him.

Confused and beginning to feel frightened again, Lena turned on her heel and raced down to where she knew Angela’s main office was. She reached out to grab the doorknob and slam her way inside, but found with quite a bit of distress that she couldn’t even grab onto it to open the door - and it didn’t occur to her that she could just walk right through if nothing was tangible.

Breathing was becoming difficult, and Lena managed to make it a few steps back before she collapsed to her knees, covering her face in her hands and wheezing slightly as she began to hyperventilate. As her panic attack developed, she lost her grip on reality, and the suffocating void reappeared around her - which really only succeeded in making the panic  _ worse. _

Lena curled up into a little ball, squeezing her eyes shut and wondering what was happening, trying not to let her thoughts get too existential for fear of making it worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also, the 1920s au is continuing this friday with the start of a multi-chapter fic, "hardly gatsby," to work through the actual plotline! because i got tired of loosely related misadventures!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amelie tries to force herself to recover and be fine, despite just losing another of the most important people in her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAN i don't like this chapter lol but it's basically a transition chapter into the rest of the fic so i can live with it

Watching the Slipstream dip towards the buildings of the nearby city was enough to make Amelie’s entire body go numb. Her heart thudded dully in her chest, her amber eyes wide as she watched the plane holding her closest and dearest friend, the woman that had been keeping her alive and helping her every step of the way at a level a little deeper than even Angela and Ana could manage, crash. She swallowed dully, barely aware of Morrison jumping into action immediately, yelling something into his comm as he began to sprint off, Winston lumbering after him with nothing more than a glance back at Amelie, who was still staring at the spot where the plane had disappeared.

She was barely aware of what was happening. She didn’t even realize that she wasn’t alone in the hangar anymore until somebody grabbed ahold of her elbow; Amelie tensed up and made to move away, only to catch eye contact with a very concerned and seemingly upset Angela. “Come on, Amelie, let’s get back to your room and wait for some news,” she spoke softly and gently, and the widow allowed the doctor to lead her away without much of a fight, taking one more glance back to the sky.

She felt like she was having an out of body experience as the good doctor led her back down the expansive hallways of the watchpoint, and Amelie could almost sense the progress she had made over the course of the last month or so crumbling beneath her, the foundation of stability and willingness to fake it until she made it disappearing as quickly as Lena had. She was barely aware that it was probably a little unhealthy to have depended on someone as much as she did her best friend, but for the moment, in her state of dissociation and shock, she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Once she sat down in one of the chairs in her room, time felt nonexistent. The only indications that it was passing at all were Angela needing to get up to attend to some recent injuries from a freshly concluded mission, Ana eventually making her way into the room to sit with her for a while, and the soft metronome of the clock  _ tick, tick, tick _ ing away. Amber eyes occasionally glanced up to watch the second hand move slowly around the face of the clock, and she wondered where Lena was (was she even alive, was she scared, was she trapped between dimensions, what was happening to her).

She could tell that her silence was noticed and cause for worry by Angela and Ana by the cautiousness that they treated her with, the gentle way one of them would occasionally speak up and mention something. She knew that they were avoiding the subject of the Slipstream, but there was only so long that they could go about doing that, because three hours after the plane disappeared before Amelie’s eyes, Winston stood at the doorway, unable to fit through with his massive frame.

“Lena never showed up to get the information from Reyes. We can confirm now that she’s missing, but nobody’s really sure  _ where _ she could be - or  _ when.” _ He looked exhausted, and for just a moment, Amelie empathized with him. She knew that Winston and Lena were close, and she could only imagine how it felt to have technology created partially by her malfunction and send someone so special into oblivion. “We’re going to start working on trying to get some way to look for her down. We don’t know how long it’s going to take, though, or if it’ll even work, but we’re hoping for the best.”

Amelie nodded slowly, taking a small breath and making yet another effort to remain strong and pretend that she wasn’t affected by anything that was going on. “Well, why are you standing here instead of working on it, then?” she asked, almost startled by the sudden sternness that her voice held, surprised that she sounded more like the Amelie before she was kidnapped by Talon than the Amelie she had been for the last few weeks, and almost given a little bit of confidence - given a little bit of hope that, maybe, everything could go back to normal, as soon as Lena was found.

She was confident in Overwatch’s scientists for the moment; one of their inventions had fallen and crashed, but that was far from the only thing they had ever built, and she was sure that her friend would be fine. Or maybe she was just reassuring herself in the back of her mind, trying to pretend that there was nothing to worry about and that there never had been anything to worry about. For the first time in ages, she hoped that the optimistic side of her was right.

Winston snorted faintly, as if he was annoyed that a dancer and a civilian (if a protected civilian) was telling him what to do, but he lowered his head in a bit of a nod. “Right. Just thought you two would appreciate knowing,” he responded in a quipped tone, before lumbering out of the room, probably off to the labs to figure out what to do next. Amelie watched him leave, still sitting in the chair and unsure of whether she would be able to stand for long if she tried; despite how calm and confident she was trying to convince herself she was, her knees were still weak, and she was still a little shaky.

Ana rested a hand on her shoulder, and Amelie jumped ever so slightly, turning her head with wide eyes to stare at her friend. “You don’t have to pretend that you’re okay, you know. I understand that you probably feel like you’ve been in a low point for too long, but you’ve lived through a lot, and nobody expects for you to be alright for a long time after being kidnapped, losing your husband, and watching Lena disappear in such a short period of time.” Her tone was almost  _ cautious, _ and that almost annoyed Amelie, but she did her best to hide that underneath a small and hopefully reassuring smile.

“I know I don’t,” she spoke quietly, giving off the slightest of sighs and relaxing back into the chair. “I just want to make myself be fine, because I’m tired of being confined to the watchpoint, and I know that Gerard would want me to be okay, and I know for  _ sure _ that Lena wanted me to recover more than even  _ I _ wanted to recover.” Amelie ran a hand through her hair, closing her eyes and taking just a moment to rest and remember that she was going to be fine.

* * *

 

After a month, Amelie finally managed to convince herself and Angela that she had made enough progress that she was fine and recovering smoothly, that she was perfectly capable of living on her own - and in early March, she stood in front of the house where she had lived for so long with Gerard, prepared to go inside and gather up any personal belongings that might be left before moving to her old house in Paris where she and her husband had lived before moving to Gibraltar.

Lena was still missing, but Amelie had done her best to just carry on without her despite how the optimism about finding her faded. Apparently, the longer she was missing, the less likely it was that she would be recovered, and if so it was extremely unlikely that she could be brought back  _ alive, _ especially considering it had been a month now since the Slipstream crashed. The widow missed her friend dearly, but did her best not to think about her - she couldn’t afford to spend such a long time grieving over people she would almost definitely never get back. 

So she faked it, determined that eventually her recovery would stop being forced and start being real. She just wanted to get back to her old life, get back to dancing and her daily routine, albeit with less love and laughter than she had become used to since Gerard was stationed at the main watchpoint, perhaps even since she married him so soon after turning eighteen. She was leaving behind Ana and Angela, but she was going away to somewhere she could live like it was a simpler time. If she got word of Lena’s return, she would be back again in a heartbeat, but for the moment she just wanted to get away from her losses. She wanted to try to get back to a time where her mind was healthy.

She knew that just running away from her trauma, from her limited responsibilities, was hardly a healthy way to manage things, but she couldn’t care less.

It wasn’t until she stepped forward to the old wooden door, until she rested her hand against the handle, that Amelie realized that she was not ready to enter the house and be faced with whether or not anything had changed or been cleaned up in the time since Gerard died.

It had been two months now since she was helped to the watchpoint, and though the weather was warmer and much of the snow had melted away, there was an all too real possibility that the moment she stepped inside she would be faced with an unchanged reality. She was afraid that she would find the dinner she had been preparing that fateful day still rotting on the counter. She was afraid that when she walked into the hallway she would find dried blood clinging to the carpet. She was afraid that she would poke her head into the bathroom and see the splatters of red all over the bathtub and the tiled floor left from her days staying still and not wanting to leave the house, thinking that she didn’t deserve to live. She was afraid that she would step into the bedroom to grab onto some photographs and clothing and find Gerard’s body, still covered in stab wounds and left to rot.

She knew none of that was likely. She knew that Gerard’s body, at least, had been cleaned up and buried long ago. She knew that somebody had probably cleaned up the house as well. That didn’t stop her from being terrified and just generally not ready to go into the house.

Still, Amelie followed the same general formula that she had been following for the last month and a half, and she steeled herself before turning the handle and stepping into the house. She kept her eyes closed for a moment, and it wasn’t until she knew that she was inside that she opened her eyes and… found the house, relatively, similar to how she had long kept it.

Tidy.

Maybe even tidier than it had been in a long time.

The widow looked around, glanced back at the carpet and finding that the blood had been cleaned up, finding that everything was fine. Strangely enough, that just made her sad - it just made her think about how everything had been before everything went to hell. How happy she had been, a little bit impatient for something interesting to happen, but happy nonetheless. Amelie let out a heavy sigh, running a hand through her hair before she walked back into the hallway and towards the bedroom. She would make this quicker than she had initially intended.

She avoided looking at the bed, choosing instead to walk to the dresser and gather some of the framed pictures that were resting there. She only paused when she hit the two most important pictures she kept, that were saved in a spot all to themselves where they were protected from everything else.

Her and Gerard on their wedding day, and a picture of herself with Lena on top of the Eiffel Tower when she had been persuaded to take the younger woman to Paris for a few days over Christmas.

All of the people pictured were gone now, but in different ways. Gerard was dead, dead at her own hands. Lena was missing, God knows where, God knows when. Two of the most beautiful souls that Amelie had ever met in her life were now snuffed out, and…

Her gaze shifted over to the bottle of antidepressants that rested on the edge of the dresser, and thought for just a moment that maybe, just maybe, she should make an attempt to join them. The widow breathed out slowly, and forced herself to just look down at the deep wood of the dresser, choosing to grab onto the two pictures and move on to gathering up her clothes and shove them in the duffel bag she had brought. No, she wasn’t going to give up just yet.

There was always the possibility that Lena would come back, after all, and she didn’t know if she wanted to be the reason the pilot was given bad news upon finally coming home. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena reappears after six long months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it gets gay towards the end

Lena wasn’t sure how long she had been missing; she had no idea how much time had passed in the realm of normalcy when she was stuck in the dark, bleak void of nothingness. It didn’t feel like very long to her, but she could tell it had been a while from the lack of hustle and bustle that she found when she finally flickered back into  _ something _ ; she had been working at Overwatch for a while now, and she was used to there being a huge commotion whenever an important member was in peril or something. She didn’t think of herself as  _ important, _ really, but she knew that the Slipstream had failed, and she knew that they would try to find the test pilot that had been in it when it crashed.

She could recognize that she was in the hallway near the med bay, and glancing down the hall she could see Dr. Ziegler’s main office door. Lena began walking towards it, knowing that Angela was normally there if she wasn’t seeing a patient, and that she would find her if she only remained there for a little while and waited to see if she would come back there.

Before she could reach the door, though, she began to flicker. It was an odd feeling that she had never experienced, not painful, but scary nonetheless. She vanished from reality, and looked down at her hands to find them flickering blue, transparent. Scared to death, the young woman began struggling to move more quickly, trying to get to the door before she disappeared completely and wouldn’t be able to get any sort of help for a while. “Angela!” she called out, reaching out to the doorknob and finding that she couldn’t even touch it. Her hand passed right through, and she felt afraid and sick. “Angela, please help me, I’m right here, I promise! Open the door!”

The door quickly opened, and Lena’s hazel eyes met quickly with Angela’s blue. The doctor gasped slightly, and tried to move towards her, tried to reach out to grab onto her hands and hold onto her. Just as with the doorknob, though, her hands passed right through the older woman’s, and she began to panic. “Angie, I’m real, I promise. Please help me. I don’t know how long I’ve been gone, I don’t know where I’ve been, I just know that I could disappear any moment and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

The doctor looked her over for a moment, looking terrified and confused, then gulped. “Lena, I don’t know if you’re a hallucination or not, but I’m not… I’m not just going to let you disappear. Please try to follow me. I think I might know how we can keep you in place.” Angela began walking down the hallway quickly, and Lena followed her without hesitating. The two women ran down the hallways, the doctor seeming to know where she was going and Lena trusting her enough to follow her anywhere. She just wanted to stop disappearing. She wanted to stop disappearing. She just wanted to be human again.

Eventually, they reached a room in the labs; it was more like two rooms, a large glass wall and door separating them from the other half. Angela yanked the door open, ignoring when an alarm began blaring, and gestured for Lena to enter the room; she did so without hesitating, feeling herself disappear and panic as she entered the room. The last thing she was aware of was the door slamming shut behind her, and then she was back in the darkness of wherever she had been trapped for god knows how long.

As soon as she was sure that she was no longer in the watchpoint, Lena could feel despair bubbling up in her chest, and she collapsed to her knees. She’d been so close to returning to normalcy; she’d carried out a conversation with one of her friends, and clearly whatever the room was supposed to do had not been successful. Feeling a panic attack beginning to build, she covered her face with her hands and tried to keep her breathing even and calm. She let out a shriek, hyperventilating faintly, trying to think of positive things, trying to reassure herself that she would get another chance.

She didn’t know how long it was before she came back into reality, whether that was because of her panic or because of the way time didn’t seem to exist in the void. It couldn’t have been that long, though, because when she looked up, she was still in the same room, and Angela seemed to be just on the other side of the huge glass wall, arguing with Morrison. Lena couldn’t hear them, but she hopped to her feet, cupped her hands around her mouth, and called out both of their names.

Morrison was in the middle of heatedly saying something to Angela - maybe they were arguing because the doctor had set off the room and apparently nobody was there, but the frustration on his face dissipated rather quickly and was replaced by shock instead. He reached to the control panel on the opposite wall, and pressed a button, allowing him to speak up so that Lena could hear him. “You’ve been missing for months, Oxton. We’ve searched high and low for you. You should be held safe in this room for now - it’s supposed to prevent teleporting and translocating technology. I don’t think we can stop you from flickering in and out of reality, though.”

“We called Winston up, and he’s already doing some research. We might need to do some experiments on you to raise the odds of successfully saving you, but we’re not going to remove you from this room. This is where you’re safe.” Angela gently pressed a single hand against the glass separating them, and gave Lena a small, gentle smile. “It’s all going to be alright, I promise. Amelie’s flying in from France first thing in the morning to be here with you.”

Amelie was in France? She must have been gone a long time, if she was discharged from the watchpoint and allowed to move countries away. Lena gulped softly, and looked around the cell. There was very little around the tiny room, but there were windows, and if there was one thing she knew it was that Gibraltar was fairly pretty, so at least she had that to do. If she knew that she would always reappear right where she had vanished, then she was already put fairly at ease. “Okay. I… I trust you guys and Winston and everything. Just… please help.”

“We’re doing our best, Lena. I can promise you that much.”

* * *

 

She was sitting against one of the windows to outside, having just phased back into reality. Lena had been in the glass room for a little more than a day now, and she was beginning to get bored, just wanting to get out of there and live her life. Occasionally, somebody would walk back and strike up a conversation with her, but there was only so long that she could have conversations that would inevitably end as soon as she vanished from reality.

Angela had started calling her condition ‘chronal dissociation.’ It was brand new, both to the head doctor and to everyone that worked in the medical bay alongside her. Nobody had ever seen anything like it, probably because of the Slipstream’s technology being groundbreaking and developed just for the plane that she had crashed in. Lena could understand that it was going to take a while for something to be figured out, but she was tired of not being able to touch anything. Of flashing in and out of the void. Of being unable to get used to it, and having panic attacks whenever it happened.

It was explained to her that the Slipstream incident was six months ago. Most members of Overwatch had long given up on finding her, and she had been assumed dead despite her case still being open. She was a conspiracy in a long line of civilians crying out against the organization. She had been missed greatly by her friends, however, if Angela’s words were anything to go by - “but we couldn’t have just been searching for you nonstop. We were emotionally exhausted. Please understand that everyone here is so, so happy that you’re back, and we should have found you so much sooner.”

Apparently, Amelie Lacroix had been discharged from the watchpoint five months prior and was now living in a house she once shared with her husband in Paris. She was doing well, still in touch with Angela and Ana, and had reintroduced herself easily into one of the larger ballet studios in the area. She had been contacted by the good doctor almost as soon as Lena was locked away in the glass room, and she was on a plane to Spain right now, having dropped everything to come see her for the first time in months. The pilot was… touched by that, but didn’t expect for her to arrive quickly.

Still, she couldn’t wait. She knew that Amelie - regardless of how she really thought of the situation, and she would almost definitely consider Lena’s return a miracle, if the pilot knew her friend at all - would treat her exactly the same as she had before. She trusted the Frenchwoman with her life, and she genuinely believed that she wouldn’t even think about treating her like a delicate piece of glass as anybody who interacted with her lately did. She looked forward to talking to her again.

The orange of the sunrise was beginning to fade to dark blue, and she was enraptured by the sky, seeming to be more like a painting than real life - so she was caught off guard when there was a sudden knock on the glass, the window leading to the rest of the room that her back was facing. Lena turned around quickly, and almost started crying when she saw Amelie there. The ballerina looked to be about as close to tears as she was, a wide smile cracking her pale face in half and her amber eyes twinkling.

She wasn’t sure if she was thinking this in the friendship way or the gay way, but Lena was certain that she had never seen anybody quite as beautiful as Amelie was in that moment. The pilot stumbled slightly as she jumped to her feet, and sprinted over to the window, flickering ever so slightly as she moved but capable of ignoring the tingling sensation for the first time in the apparent six months it had been happening. Lena all but pressed her full weight against the glass, satisfied to find that it wasn’t just letting her through but wishing desperately that it would so that she could give her best friend the big bear hug that she deserved.

“Cherie, you look absolutely awful,” Amelie commented rather bluntly, but Lena could hear the joking tone behind her voice as she spoke. Nobody with that happy a smile could ever be saying something out of malice. The pilot let out a brief, shocked laugh, and ran a hand through her hair, which she was just now realizing was disheveled and would probably be windblown the rest of her life. She wouldn’t doubt it if her clothes were torn and there were dark circles under her eyes, too. She still needed to change out of her Slipstream gear; nobody could figure out how to get clothes to not phase through.

“Well, not all of us can look like we just stepped off the runway, luv,” she responded in an equally joking tone, though she meant every word of it. Amelie was more of a mess than she usually was, looking like she had just stumbled out of bed without having had time to shower - which she probably had if she left in the middle of the night. But Lena was so happy to see her friend that she couldn’t really bring herself to give a fuck.

The ballerina let out a soft laugh, and the pilot couldn’t tell when her heart skipped a beat if it was from the chronal dissociation or from something more tender.

**Author's Note:**

> comments would be appreciated if you enjoyed this!!! i'm also taking fanfic commissions, contact me at lapisschmidt@gmail.com if you're interested.
> 
> i have overwatch on xbox. i'm a mercy, widowmaker, and sombra main, and sometimes i play pharah and d.va. if you wanna add me on xbox live i'm teamchaosprez!


End file.
